Amazon, Kindle‘s parent company, has bought a relatively unknown and new company called TouchCo. Before the buy out, TouchCo used to supply touchscreen technological solutions to companies. The company specializes in building touchscreen interfaces that have the capacity of detecting and parsing multiple touch inputs. This makes their touchscreen technology extremely useful for devices that may be shared at some point.
It also means that any touchscreen made with TouchCo’s technology will have the advantage of being extremely capable and flexible to UI changes. Amazon and TouchCo refused to talk about the deal and they haven’t mentioned the amount for which the deal was sealed. But ever since the news broke, TouchCo’s official website has put up a notice about the company not doing any business.
Those who are following the eBook market closely, are of the opinion that the market can only grow bigger over the coming years. Since Amazon is the pioneer in this field, it is expected that they would look to take their Kindle eBook reader to new heights through innovation. Post the iPad launch, a lot of people have expressed concern over Amazon’s ability to handle the competition. But it is for certain that the Kindle in its current shape is a completely specialized product that will still be the chosen reader for digital book lovers.
However, the purchase of TouchCo shows that Amazon is still interested in making a device that conforms to the current trend of touchscreen tablets. Since Amazon has not declared what the wish to do with the company, we can only speculate what direction the Kindle will take.
Most are of the opinion that the popular eInk Kindle will remain and a complimentary model will be produced that will have features that directly compete with the iPad. The recently released KDK (Kindle Developers Kit) is also taken as a sign of such a thing to come.