Does the Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT) know something we don’t? Mail Online MD James Bromley tells NMA he’s talking with Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) to launch the British paper on to the US-only device “and the UK version” “in the near future”.
What “UK version”? Despite Kindle 2.0 having been unveiled in America, there’s still no public commitment from Amazon to launching either version in Europe, likely because the Whispernet mobile network that delivers online papers to the gadget was built only to work in the US. So, whilst American readers will get to enjoy headlines like “Illegal immigrants caught trying to enter Britain hidden in wheelie bins“, for now such stories cannot grace a UK Kindle.
Amongst the 31 newspapers available on the slab, American users can get digital editions of The Times ($9.99pm), Financial Times ($9.99pm) and The Independent ($14.99pm). Titles also include The Irish Times, Le Monde, Les Echos and Shanghai Daily. Other papers like the idea of wider distribution but are non-committal on Kindle. The Telegraph “haven’t made a formal decision” and The Guardian likes only outlets “such as” Kindle and Sony’s E-reader, their respective digital execs told NMA.