The iPad and Kindle are going to make it easier, faster, and cheaper for all of us to get to the videos, music, books, and magazines we love.
How? By demonstrating big-time mass appeal. Like cell phones, they’ll become a perceived necessity. A “That’s so cool. Got to have one. How did we ever get along without one.” kind of thing.
The iPad was just released and sold somewhere around 400,000 units the first week and up to 6 million units this year. The launch is being hyper-covered by all the major media.
The Kindle is Amazon’s most popular product.
This is great news for web delivered media fans even if you’re not the least bit interested in either the iPad or Kindle right now. (But how could you not be?)
Mobile media is taking another giant step forward and the guys publishing any kind of electronic media are going to be all over making it easier and faster for us to get our hands on it. Eventually, it will get cheaper too. Competition will see to that.
Competition will also see to it that we get higher quality video from all sources.
Instead of watching Lost on a medium resolution stream off ABC.com (the day after you forgot to set the DVR and weren’t planning on getting home late Tuesday night – arrgggh!) you’ll have access to a high-def stream that looks as good on your 52″ flat screen as it did on the original network broadcast. Sure, you may have to sit though “limited commercial interruptions” or pay a buck to skip the ads but you’ll be able to watch anything, anytime, anywhere.
And that’s going to happen sooner than you think. Thank Apple and Amazon for the boost.
Nope, I don’t own an iPad or Kindle – yet. But I will. If you’re a fan – or even run-of-the-mill consumer – of video, music, or printed works you’ll own something like it to. It’s going to be a value priced, “got to have it” piece of hardware just about everyone will own sooner than you think.
Now go stream something cool.