No New Amazon Kindle This Year...

Bummer...

Is Amazon playing mind games with the media? Or maybe changing its mind—because people might shun the existing Kindle if the first 2.0 model were expected in a month or so? Fear of the Osborne effect?

Now the word from Amazon itself, namely chief spokesman Craig Berman, is that new Kindles will not appear in ‘08.

I’d love for BusinessWeek’s Peter Burrows and others to tell us the story behind the story.

Berman’s exact words

Meanwhile here are Berman’s exact words to Brad Stone of the New York Times: "Don’t believe everything you read. There’s a lot of rumor and speculation about the Kindle. One thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be no new version of the Kindle this year. A new version is possible sometime next year at the earliest." So now apparently it’s safe to go into the water again, so to speak, and take advantage of that $100-credit-card deal to bring the net price down to $259?

The three questions I'm asking myself are:

1) Should I go ahead and get one now? (I was poised to get one just as the rumors started flying about the new version.)

2) Should I sign-up for the credit card to save $100? (I only have one credit card and don't like the idea of getting a second one.)

3) Will I be happy with a device that looks like a snowspeeder?

My inclination is to go ahead and get one. No telling when the new version will appear. If the new version is significantly better I can always sell my original and upgrade.

I'm not so sure about the credit card... (I never claimed to be a rational economist.)

If I do get a Kindle, I'd also be inclined to get one of these cases as well.



Wired shares 5 ideas for how to improve the Kindle whenever the next version does finally come out.