That's because there are lots of rumors about a Kindle 3 being available in time for Christmas 2009. Two new models in one year seems a little too fast for Amazon to manage, but we'll see. Plastic Logic is breathing down Amazon's neck without even having a device on the market! Everyone sees its sleek, space-age look as the thing to beat; the still unnamed device is supposed to hit the market “early” next year. Technically, I guess you could call anything before the 4^th of July early.

The one thing that persists in the Kindle rumors is that Kindle 3's screen will be bigger than Kindle 2. That makes a lot of marketing sense. That makes it not so much a replacement for the Kindle 2 as an alternative. If you want an eReader for magazines, textbooks, newspapers—and graphic novels if you can live without color— then you want a Kindle 3 with a bigger screen. If you want it primarily for novels and nonfiction books, then you still want the Kindle 2 so that you can carry it more easily. Of course, Amazon would love you to want both!

So far no one is talking about color except in the Fujitsu, which is both large and full color but also very expensive ($900!).

And of course, there are still the mysterious Murdoch and Hearst eReaders still to come!