NSFW: I Admit It, The iPad Is A Kindle Killer. I Just Wish It Weren't Going To Kill Reading Too
For one reason or another, I've spent the past few weeks down at the TechCrunch offices. As a result, it's proved almost impossible to avoid iPad fanboy hysteria.
Context & Ripple Effects
The iPad has dominated gadget discourse since January, when ReadWriteWeb catalogued the full anatomy of the anti-iPad backlash. A week ago, paidContent ran the contrarian case that the iPad actually strengthens Amazon, because the Kindle app rides along on every tablet sold. This column stakes out a third position: the iPad does kill the Kindle as a device, and that is exactly what worries the author about the future of reading.
The argument lands alongside TechCrunch's companion piece telling authors their next book should be an app rather than an iBook, which frames the deeper anxiety: on a multitasking tablet, a book competes with everything else on the screen. Whether the Kindle survives as hardware or retreats into software is now the live question between Apple and Amazon.
First-order effects
- Amazon faces its first credible hardware rival in the e-reader market it created, with Apple's iBooks storefront shipping pre-installed on a device buyers clearly want.
- Publishers and authors must now choose among three distribution paths — print, iBooks, or app-store titles — instead of treating e-publishing as a single Kindle channel.
Second-order effects
- Amazon's most likely counter is to lean into the paidContent logic: keep the Kindle app excellent on iOS and treat the tablet as a bookstore rather than a threat, shifting the contest from devices to the storefront layer.
- If app-based books gain traction over iBook files, Apple's control of the App Store review process becomes a new chokepoint over publishing that did not exist under the Kindle regime.
Third-order effects
- If tablets absorb dedicated e-reader sales, the industry splits into a hardware commodity layer and a high-stakes storefront war between Apple and Amazon over who owns the reader relationship.
- The column's cultural worry points at a durable tension: immersive long-form reading competing for attention inside an all-purpose device, which may push publishers toward richer app-style formats or leave deep reading to whatever platform protects it best.
The trend: Dedicated e-readers are being pulled into general-purpose tablets, moving the real battle from device hardware to the bookstores and reading apps layered on top.