3 Strikes for Amazon! (but no, they’re not out)

July 21st, 2009. By AbiK

It is baseball season, so it’s fitting—if not welcome over at Amazon—that the company’s had 3 strikes in the last week or so. No, not those kind of strikes where employees walk out and all. These strikes have been more of the strike-to-the-ego sort.

Strike 1

We posted in last week’s Week Adjourned column that Amazon was under fire for its cracking Kindle screens. As of Friday, there were a few reports surfacing on the net that Amazon would replace the cracked screens without charging the $200 repair fee; this week the news is definitely out with numerous sites, including tech.yahoo.com and pcworld.com, reporting Amazon’s about-face.

Strike 2

Next, Amazon had to “retrieve” two George Orwell classics—1984 and Big Brother—from Kindles whose owners had rightfully purchased the books. Seems the books came via a company that didn’t quite have the rights to sell the books. Little red flag to Amazon’s buyers, no? Be that as it may, the class action that Amazon now faces over the situation is reported to also claim that this little mishap devalues the Kindle. Why? Because Kindle owners feel part of the “value” in owning a Kindle and buying books for it is that you can keep the books forever. Or maybe just not anything Orwellian.

Strike 3

It was bottom of the 9th, Amazon’s last at-bat for the week ending yesterday (Monday), when the opposing team—that would be Barnes and Noble—launched a 700,000-title e-bookstore. According to a Wall Street Journal article yesterday, the B&N e-books will be able to be read on Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone and iPod Touch, Research in Motion Ltd.’s (RIMM) BlackBerry smartphones, as well as most notebook and desktop computers. Apparently there’s been research done to indicate more folks have downloaded books to read on their iPhones than to read on the Kindle. Who knew anyone would want to read a book on a teeny-tiny screen? B&N’s betting on it.

The beauty of baseball is that the games continue on for the duration of the season, and then there’s always next season—so as they say, it ain’t over till it’s over. And as such, I’m sure we haven’t watched the last inning on this one.

Tags: Amazon, Kindle

This was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.