Because of advance deals with the likes of Amazon.com, the Kindle is already a hit with readers, but at the same time, tech pundits and analysts fear that Amazon's gizmo will claim a pre-emptive monopoly on the nascent ebook industry.
Tech analyst Farhad Manjoo recently praised the Kindle's sleek design and ready access to thousands of books, but he hastened to add that Amazon is using the Kindle to erect a wall around its internal library.
"In exchange for this convenience, though, the Kindle locks you down with more rules than the Army Field Manual," he wrote for Slate.com. "The Kindle won't let you resell or share your books. Anything you buy through the reader is fixed to your Amazon account, readable only on the Kindle or other devices that Amazon may one day deem appropriate. (The company has hinted that it'll build an iPhone app that can read Kindle books.) Even worse, you can buy books for your Kindle only from Amazon's store. Indeed, the device makes it difficult to read anything that's not somehow routed through Amazon first."
Other tech analysts agree, noting the inflexibility of the ebooks sold on the Kindle. The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro also pointed out that giving users access to Amazon's vast library of books isn't what it's cracked up to be.
"Amazon's selection of e-book titles still has gaps of its own, even among current bestsellers and critically-applauded books," he wrote in his blog.
But is there even any competition? Yes, and it's called the Sony PRS-700. According to one favorable review, Sony's reader stands to become the Betamax of this war: the superior piece of tech that loses because it has an inferior selection of content. To date, the Kindle offers about 240,000 books. The PRS-700 only offers 100,000.
That said, the Kindle's utility for the adult industry remains unclear. Performers and crewmen might find it a handy way to kill time during a slow shoot, but producers and webmasters will have a harder time finding a way to make money with the device, which currently doesn't display graphics and only offers limited Internet access.