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Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, unveiled the Kindle 2 on Monday in New York.
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By BRAD STONE and MOTOKO RICH
Published: February 9, 2009
Escalating its efforts to dominate the fledgling industry for electronic books, Amazon introduced a new version of its electronic book reader today, dubbed Kindle 2.

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Jeff Bezos on Amazon's New e-Book, the Kindle 2


Mike Segar/Reuters
Amazon said the upgraded device has seven times the memory as the original version, allows faster page-turns and has a crisper, though still black-and-white, display. The Kindle 2 also features a new design with round keys and a short, joystick-like controller ? a departure from the design aspects of the previous version, which some buyers had criticized as awkward. The new device will ship on Feb. 24. Amazon did not change the price for the device, which remains $359.

Though the improvements to the Kindle are only incremental, Jeff Bezos, Amazon?s founder and chief executive, defined some ambitious goals for the device. ?Our vision is every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds,? he said at a news conference in New York.

Amazon introduced several new features for the Kindle. A new text-to-speech function allows readers to switch between reading words on the device and having the words read to them by a computerized voice. That technology was provided by Nuance, a speech-recognition company based in Burlington, Mass.

Amazon is also allowing Kindle owners to transfer texts between their Kindle and other mobile devices. Amazon said it is working on making digital texts available for other gadgets (such as mobile phones), though it did not specify which ones.

One competitive threat Amazon is facing in its effort to dominate the world of e-books is from Google, which has scanned in some seven million books, many of them out of print. Google has also struck deals with publishers and authors to split the proceeds from the online sales of those texts.

Google recently said it would soon begin selling these books for reading on mobile devices like Apple?s iPhone and phones running Google?s Android operating system.

Implicitly addressing the threat posed by Google, Mr. Bezos said that Amazon knows better than other companies what book-buyers wants and stressed Amazon?s digital catalog of 230,000 newer books and best-sellers.

?We have tens of millions of customers who buy books from us every day and we know what they want to read,? he said. ?And we are making sure to prioritize those items.?

Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world?s largest publisher of consumer books and a unit of Bertelsmann of Germany, said the company was working with Amazon and other e-book makers to digitize its so-called backlist of older titles. When asked in an interview after the news conference if he was concerned about the effects of Amazon?s dominance in the e-book market, Mr. Dohle paused and laughed.

?It is not up to us to talk about Amazon?s competition,? he said. ?I don?t think that any kind of defensive business strategy will succeed. We want to grow our business in all channels and one of the fastest growing customers is Amazon in all areas.?

?We see the Kindle and we see e-books as a real opportunity because we think that it will not cannibalize the physical part of the business and it will also generate and create new readers of books,? Mr. Dohle said.