Three new Kindles from Amazon!

Kindle. $79. More or less the current model, but 30 per cent lighter and minus a keyboard. This thing is going to fly off the shelves. It has an astonishing price-point that puts ebooks firmly within reach of far, far more people. It ditches the keyboard, which is fair enough, and it looks fab.

Kindle touch. $99 or $149 for 3G. Retains e-ink and nukes buttons; adds touch interface. An interesting move, given the price. I’m unsure if it’ll lead to purchase issues because of doubt over which model to pick (standard or touch), or whether it’ll be a straight upsell from the standard Kindle. I’m not sold on the touch interface for this kind of device: I like the Kindle buttons, and getting fingerprints all over the screen doesn’t seem like a great prospect. I’m just not sure this model is necessary in the line-up.

Kindle Fire. $199 7-inch Android-based tablet. This is initially going to sell like hot cakes. There’s no camera, mic or 3G, but you get Wi-Fi and 30 days of Amazon Prime (which in the UK seemingly means items being dispatched and lost by Royal Mail half the time anyway…) The question mark will be over usage. I do read on my iPad, which has a similar kind of display, but a standard Kindle’s e-ink is much better for long-form reading. But the Kindle Fire also has access to apps, games, movies and music. It’ll be interesting to see just how many buyers go for this (or if they go for this and a standard Kindle) and how it affects (if at all) the iPad, not least considering Amazon’s pretty dev-hostile app store.

Regarding Apple, I disagree with some tech pundits—there is a minor threat here. Amazon’s providing people with a much cheaper and potentially more than ‘good enough’ tablet option, for general media consumption. The iPad has brand awareness, a larger screen and a massive range of apps, but the Kindle Fire will eat up a lower end of the market, potentially snaring people who might later have bought an iPad, and who don’t care for or need advanced apps on a large screen. The real losers today, though, are every other manufacturer of 7-inch Android-based tablets. As of the Kindle Fire’s released, they are royally screwed.

Good grief, The Guardian. Last week, you reported:

Doctor Who has faced many fearsome foes in the past, but none of them have been a Bolton-born TV presenter who yells “Our survey says”.

This was on the back of the show’s plummeting audience share, which saw it beaten by All Star Family Fortunes, to which The Guardian suggested:

The current series of Doctor Who – the second overseen by showrunner Steven Moffat – has faced criticism that it is too scary and too complicated for younger fans.

To be fair, The Guardian isn’t alone. Lots of publications are saying Doctor Who is screwed, largely because Moffat has the audacity to create plots that make you think a bit, that hold up brilliantly to rewatching (so you can figure out what you missed), and that have an intelligence and horror that was largely lacking in the (still pretty good) Russell T Davies era.

Only it’s not quite that simple. Tom Spilsbury reports that ratings are far more complicated than they used to be, and Who performs extremely well on the BBC Three repeat, recordings and iPlayer. The linked post shows that the current series is up on the first three series, and down only slightly on the 2008 run. Spilsbury says the following on this (WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR SERIES FOUR):

This can partially be put down to the final half of the series which concluded with Journey’s End, the return of Rose, the return of Davros, the fake regeneration, etc. Journey’s End was the top rated show of the week, and amassed almost 15 million viewers across all outlets, so this really gave a boost to the series average.

So what does The Guardian run with this week? Doctor Who’s mixed fortunes continue, which at least notes that the statistical reversal of All Star Family Fortunes ‘winning’ the ratings war again will be “shortlived”. So, not really mixed fortunes at all then, unless you consider it to be ‘mixed fortunes’ when your favourite football team goes to half-time a goal down, but then ends up winning two-one.

Spotify is seriously Facebook-friendly, says the service on its website. But it’s one thing being friendly and another being assimilated. So it’s with more than a little sadness that I read this thread on Get Satisfaction. Baffled user Dean asks:

There seems to be nowhere on Spotify’s website that lets you sign up for Spotify without a Facebook account. The sign up links ask to to log in to Facebook or create a new Facebook account.

Is there a hidden link anywhere on the website that lets you sign up without linking it to a Facebook account?

Clearly, Dean must be some kind of numpty, because, surely, Spofity wouldn’t be so insanely stupid to require you to have a Facebook account to sign-up, right? Right? Luckily, ’employee’ Darran was on hand to put everyone’s minds to rest. And by ‘put everyone’s minds to rest’, I mean ‘punch you all in the face if you had any idealistic thoughts about Spotify being anything other than Facebook’s bitch these days’:

Unfortunately you will need a Facebook account to access Spotify from now on, unless you already have an account set up.

This does not stop you creating the Facebook account adding nothing to it and making it totally private as the Facebook account does not have to be actively used.

This is a mind-bafflingly stupid decision. The only thought that crossed my mind is that Spotify is in a financial mess and needed a Facebook injection, but Facebook said “I will only inject money goodness into you, if you’re shackled to me forever”. Because Zuckerberg is kinky that way.

Mary-Jo Foley at ZDNet argues that the Windows 8 interface will be consistent across all devices, partly contradicting what I wrote yesterday about the system (in that on a tablet Windows 8 would be closer to iOS in concept than Windows).

Given that we’re a year away from Windows 8’s release and Microsoft’s being quite contradictory about it, I’d say there’s a lot of time for things to be nailed down. I suspect there is also an internal struggle at Microsoft. I’ll bet there are certain people within Microsoft arguing hard for retaining ‘proper’ Windows on tablets, because “that’s what people want”, and others arguing to ditch it, because “that’s what people need”. Alternatively, perhaps we’ll end up in a situation where the Desktop ‘app’ that boots the ‘classic’ Windows experience exists on tablets, but is all but irrelevant, due a lack of app support and the interface not being suitable for touch. That wouldn’t be great, but assuming there are plenty of Metro-style apps, that wouldn’t hugely affect performance nor the experience of using a Windows 8 tablet.

Tsk, eh? Those pesky, uncooperative (if you’re a tech pundit) markets are really screwing things up. Last week, we got the news that in the face of myriad iPad killers, the iPad’s share had PLUMMETED. No, wait. Electronista reported IDC’s data as stating that

the iPad had gained share, moving up from 65.7 percent at the start of the year to 68.3 percent.

But surely all those wonderful Android tablets with loads of ports and Flash and not-at-all-iPad-like shells are selling fast, right?

Multiple Android tablets’ arrivals only led to Google’s share shrinking, dropping from 34 percent in early 2011 to 26.8 percent mid-year.

Oh.

Still, I’m sure that won’t stop plenty of people banging on about how the iPad is doomed at some point in 2011, or 2012, or definitely by 2013. 2014 at the latest. Or maybe 2015. Just like Apple itself, really. Now Steve Jobs is no longer CEO,  the company’s pretty much screwed, as evidenced by the hard-hitting article in the New York Times, Without Jobs, Apple Shares Hit All-Time High:

At the end of regular trading Monday, Apple shares closed at $411.63, up 2.78 percent, with a new record-high market valuation of $381.62 billion. It is now clearly the most valuable company on the stock market, displacing Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $358.34 billion.

Ah. Still, give it a week or two and I’m sure we’ll have analysts and pundits falling over themselves to argue that this time, the new iPhone won’t sell, because of all the great alternatives out there. Just wait and see!