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I'm pretty surprised that the Kindle 1st Generation is from 2007. It's pretty cool that Amazon is still supporting a product from 9 years ago. I would have expe

by jtchang 11y ago

I'm pretty surprised that the Kindle 1st Generation is from 2007. It's pretty cool that Amazon is still supporting a product from 9 years ago. I would have expected support to drop off or at least not issue any new updates period.

felisml 11y ago
I'm not surprised at all...the whole point for Amazon is ebook sales, they want install base, it's nice if you upgrade your device but many people will keep paying for books regardless of device version. Throwing a few engineering headcount at keeping updates going as needed is more than worth it, and a more exact "when do we stop supporting this" trade-off can easily be calculated against usage and purchasing data since they have vertical integration to that degree.
buddapalm 11y ago
observe the free falling sales of ereaders in more recent years (any public market research will do), and you'd understand that Amazons ebooks business needs these old devices more and more.
- mrob 11y ago
  With phones getting bigger there's less need for dedicated ereaders. I mostly read on my phone, and I know other people who do too. The convenience of having books in your pocket outweighs the small screen size. From a 2015 article on phone reading ( http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-143939... ): "The number of people who read [e-books] primarily on phones has risen to 14% in the first quarter of 2015 from 9% in 2012." I can't find more recent statistics but I expect it's continuing to rise. Convenience always beats quality, eg. MP3 vs CDs, early LCDs vs CRTs.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Heavy users may be more likely to use dedicated readers so % of total users is less important than % of book sales.
tzs 11y ago
They haven't done any feature or bug fix updates in a long time for that Kindle, and this update contains no features or bug fixes. All this updated does is install new Java certificates, presumably to match new certificates on Amazon's servers.

by jtchang 11y ago

felisml 11y ago

I'm not surprised at all...the whole point for Amazon is ebook sales, they want install base, it's nice if you upgrade your device but many people will keep paying for books regardless of device version. Throwing a few engineering headcount at keeping updates going as needed is more than worth it, and a more exact "when do we stop supporting this" trade-off can easily be calculated against usage and purchasing data since they have vertical integration to that degree.

buddapalm 11y ago

observe the free falling sales of ereaders in more recent years (any public market research will do), and you'd understand that Amazons ebooks business needs these old devices more and more.

mrob 11y ago
With phones getting bigger there's less need for dedicated ereaders. I mostly read on my phone, and I know other people who do too. The convenience of having books in your pocket outweighs the small screen size. From a 2015 article on phone reading ( http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-1439398395 http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-of-phone-reading-143939... ): "The number of people who read [e-books] primarily on phones has risen to 14% in the first quarter of 2015 from 9% in 2012." I can't find more recent statistics but I expect it's continuing to rise. Convenience always beats quality, eg. MP3 vs CDs, early LCDs vs CRTs.
- Retric 11y ago
  Heavy users may be more likely to use dedicated readers so % of total users is less important than % of book sales.

tzs 11y ago

They haven't done any feature or bug fix updates in a long time for that Kindle, and this update contains no features or bug fixes. All this updated does is install new Java certificates, presumably to match new certificates on Amazon's servers.