iSlate vs. Kindle: Mobile screen smackdown

The Apple enthusiast community — cult is such an ugly word — buzzes louder every day anticipating the unveiling of a shiny new amulet. We won’t know exactly what it is until Steve Jobs finishes his conversation with the burning bush and descends from the mountain. But the soothsayers in the valley below have been busy casting yarrow stalks and reading tea leaves. “He who is called Jobs will unveil a tablet computer called the iSlate,” they say: “It will be bigger than an iPhone and smaller than a MacBook. It will revolutionize the way people read books and magazines and watch movies.” “All hail He-who-is-called-Jobs,” the community chants. 

The soothsayers are generally wrong. None predicted that the iPhone would be feature a big touch screen on its face and little else. Not one expected that it would be a device more for mobile Web browsing than for making phone calls. This time around these guys seem to forget that there’s already a device changing the way we read books and magazines. It’s called the Amazon Kindle. But even if they’re half right, it should be interesting. 

When Jobs came down from the mountain with the iPod, Apple entered a virtually unexploited market. There were dozens of MP3 players, but none had captured consumers’ hearts. When he unveiled the iPhone, it was a similar situation. Smartphones were just a niche segment of the cell phone world. 

An iSlate would face different conditions. The ground is well plowed. The Kindle had a breakout holiday season. Amazon says the device out sold the trendy Zhu Zhu hamsters and all other single products on its site for the holiday season. The online retailer doesn’t provide any sales figures to back the claim, but the Kindle has become the leader of the e-reader pack. 

And there is a pack. Before the holidays, Sony launched a new version of its Reader, which promptly sold out. Barnes & Noble joined the market with its Nook device, which also quickly sold out. At the Consumer Electronics Show at the beginning of the month, manufacturers took the wraps off several e-reader competitors, including two with big 11-inch displays, the Skiff from publisher Hearst and the Que from startup Plastic Logic. 

Assessing the Kindle against the rumored iSlate is a bit like comparing Apples to things that are not Apples. An iSlate would likely do more than any e-reader, playing music, displaying videos and photos and perhaps providing GPS navigation. The e-readers are optimized to master one task, displaying text. 

There’s been a lot of noise about the iPhone as an e-reader, but I don’t know any iPhone owners who have actually read a book on theirs. The screen is too small, like all LCD displays it has glare and it uses too much power. 

The rumored 10.1 inch screen would solve the size issue, but compound the power consumption problem. Another rumor says it will use more energy-efficient, state-of-the-art OLED technology. That would be cool, but would raise the price to around $2,000. 

The Kindle and other e-readers use technologies often described as electronic paper. They are reflective displays, which means they bounce sunlight or interior lighting to your eyeballs. In part because they don’t emit light, they have phenomenal battery lives. You could read War and Peace without recharging an electronic paper device. 

It’s possible, even probable, that the Kindle and iSlate will both succeed. But still the devices would be competitors. The optimal size for a portable device when it’s not in use is roughly equal to the dimensions of the typical pants pocket. Convincing consumers to part with hundreds of dollars for a mobile device too big to fit in a pocket is a challenge. Getting them to buy more than one is generally not going to happen. 

With Apple’s loyal fan base, an iSlate can be expected to sell well no matter what features it includes and what price it goes for. A few tech writers have already predicted that the iSlate will slay the Kindle. I doubt it. I think the fatal flaw of all e-readers is that they are designed to deliver text in a world where each day fewer people sit down to read.