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Amazon unveils Kindle DX

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-07 12:46

NEW YORK -- Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, introduced on Wednesday a large screen version of its wireless reading device designed for newspapers, magazines and academic periodicals.

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Kindle DX, the latest generation of Amazon's Kindle e-reader family, has a large 9.7 inch electronic paper display and storage for up to 3,500 books. Selling for 489 US dollars, the device will ship this summer. The original Kindle sells for 359 dollars.

With 2.5 times the size of the Kindle display, Kindle DX has more area for graphic-rich content such as professional and personal documents, newspapers and magazines, and textbooks, Amazon said in a statement.

The display is large enough that customers can read "without scrolling, panning, or zooming, and without re-flowing, which destroys the original structure of the document," Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, said in a letter to customers.

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos holds the new Kindle DX electronic reader at a news conference where the device was introduced in New York. [Agencies]

The launch of Kindle DX is being supported by some of the top newspapers in the United States, including the New York Times and Washington Post.

The newspapers will offer the Kindle DX at a reduced price to readers who live in areas where home-delivery is not available and who sign up for a long-term subscription to the Kindle edition of the newspapers.

Five US universities will launch trial programs to make Kindle DX devices available to students this fall, Amazon said.  

The expansion into newspaper and academic documents is the latest of Amazon's efforts to push into the digital book market. Some analysts doubt whether Kindle DX will help Amazon to outcompete other companies who sell similar hand-held devices, or it is a quick fix for the struggling US newspaper industry.