I’ve just read another piece lionising the Kindle as the device to end all Book Buying.

I appreciate there is a large minority of the population, and probably not just ‘early adopters’ who think Kindle is the best thing they have ever used. And Amazon’s sales numbers, seem to further that point. Though as Amazon don’t release specific numbers for Kindle, there is no way of comparing them to say, iPod touch or even iPhone.

For me the fundamental failure of this article, as appears regularly in the majority of the commentariat, is that it ignores the biggest downside of Kindle as a hardware platform. And really, I probably wouldn’t mind so much this detraction was missed if it wasn’t that this downside does seem reasonably obvious to Amazon themselves.

The future of Kindle isn’t in a single function device. This is why there are Kindle apps for iPhone, Android etc. Kindle, the piece of kit, is already and will continue to affect the traditional book publishing system in the short term it is true. But in the long term that impact is more likely to be felt through people reading their books on a myriad of multi-functional devices. Those devices which already allow multi-faceted forms of entertainment.

Just like iPhone is not a Phone (according to Gartner)- it’s a Mobile Device (mini computer), Kindle is not a Piece of Hardware – it’s a platform. And while the Hardware will possibly still exist for a few years, if it doesn’t adapt into a multi-functional device, I believe you can count those ‘few’ years on one hand.

In the end Amazon shouldn’t really care. Just like Apple, they want people to come to their store and spend money there. The fact they have built an excellent customer experience to assist the customer in consuming their stock shouldn’t depend on the device. I have previously speculated that it would be logical for Apple to open the iTunes Store to other hardware devices, though I agree that prospect is slim. Amazon on the other hand appear to have no qualms about this, and that for me is the dagger which in the longer term will seal the Kindles, as a standalone e-reader, fate.

I suggest this excellent article on e-readers in general which points out in greater detail than me the flaws of the one function device.