Somehow Kindles continue to dominate the ereader market, and yet if you follow the industry closely it’s readily apparent that Kindles are the least innovative and the slowest to change and get upgrades compared to other brands.
All the other main ereader companies now offer devices with color E Ink screens in addition to ereaders with regular black and white screens, but you won’t find any color Kindles on Amazon’s website.
Amazon always used to sell at least one Kindle with dedicated page turn buttons, but now that the Kindle Oasis has been discontinued without a replacement, Kindles are now the only brand to offer zero models with page buttons.
Additionally, other brands offer something in the mid-size 7.8″-8″ range, but not Amazon. The Kindle Paperwhite has a 6.8″ screen and the Kindle Scribe jumps all the way up to 10.2″.
Amazon has found a way to sell about a dozen different variations and bundle packages for the Kindle Paperwhite, but there’s actually very little variety in the Kindle lineup now.
Kindles lagging behind the competition isn’t new. Amazon was the last company to add warm frontlights to their ereaders, and they were five years late to release an eNote. For a long time Kindles were only available with 6″ screens until the Kindle Oasis 2 came out in 2017, while other companies offered a variety of sizes.
Software development has been lagging behind as well. After the Kindle Scribe came out they released a bunch of software updates to add more features to the notetaking side, but now meaningful Kindle updates are few and far between. Mostly they just change minor details now; it’s been a long time since they added any useful new features to non-Scribe Kindles.
Hopefully at some point in the future Amazon will release something interesting again. The current Kindle Paperwhite will turn 3 years old in a few months. Will Amazon upgrade it or stick with it for another year or two? Maybe they’ll do what they did a couple years ago and add more color choices with even more storage space that you’ll never use and call it good.
