Charlie Rose: the new Kindle

Around this recording

The recordings either side of it, in order.

All 70 recordings of Jeff Bezos →

1. 2009

   Kindle 2 press event with Stephen King

   Bezos unveils the slimmer Kindle 2 ($359, text-to-speech, 230,000 titles) fourteen months after the original, stating the goal of ‘every book ever printed in any language in under 60 seconds’, demonstrating a newspaper and a book on the device, then handing the stage to Stephen King, who reads from a novella written for the Kindle.

2. 2009

   The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

   Bezos’s first late-night comedy appearance: he brings the Kindle 2 to Jon Stewart on the day it ships, calls its reading voice ‘a little freaky’, and mostly laughs while Stewart praises paper books as ‘comfortably low tech’, teases Amazon Prime and feigns shock at the $359 price.

3. 2009

   Charlie Rose: Kindle 2 and internet retailing

   Bezos returns to Rose’s table after the Kindle 2 launch to talk about Amazon’s business model, what is new in the Kindle 2, and the future technologies he expects to change reading and retail.

4. 2009

   CNN Money interview on the Kindle DX

   Short CNN Money interview segments in which Bezos defends the nearly $500 Kindle DX as ‘a great value’ and argues that it could be a lifeline for newspapers and magazines, weeks after the device’s unveiling.

5. 2009

   Video message to Zappos employees on the acquisition

   On the day Amazon announced it was buying Zappos, Bezos — in a polo shirt, standing at a whiteboard in a bare room — recorded a message for Zappos employees distilling ‘everything I know’ into four lessons: obsess over customers, invent, think long-term, and remember that ‘it’s always Day 1’.

6. 2010

   We are what we choose

   Bezos returns to his alma mater to deliver the Baccalaureate address, built around the story of his grandmother and his grandfather’s lesson that ‘it’s harder to be kind than clever.’

7. 2010

   Charlie Rose: the new Kindle

   Bezos sits with Charlie Rose the evening after Amazon unveiled the $139 Wi-Fi Kindle, insisting the device should remain ‘for uncompromised reading’ rather than chase the iPad.

8. 2011

   Kindle Fire unveiled

   Bezos’s first full product keynote in the Apple style: he walks through the $79 Kindle, Kindle Touch and the $199 Kindle Fire tablet with its Silk browser, framing Amazon as selling ‘premium products at non-premium prices’ and the Fire as a service, not a device.

9. 2012

   Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

   Bezos brings the new 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD to Fallon’s couch, deflects questions about an Amazon smartphone, and tells the story of driving packages to the post office with MacKenzie in a Chevy Blazer in 1995.

10. 2012

    Charlie Rose: Amazon’s holiday push

    In the middle of a rare publicity week, Bezos tells Charlie Rose that Amazon is ‘willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time,’ explains why it sells Kindle hardware at cost and makes money when people use it, and discusses physical expansion and competition with Apple and Google.

11. 2013

    60 Minutes: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos looks to the future

    In a heavily promoted segment aired the night before Cyber Monday, Bezos walks Charlie Rose through a 1.2-million-square-foot fulfillment center, defends selling the Kindle Fire HDX at break-even, and then unveils ‘Prime Air’ octocopter delivery drones, saying 30-minute drone delivery is ‘years’ away and depends on FAA rules.

12. 2014

    Fire Phone launch

    Bezos spends roughly ninety minutes demonstrating Amazon’s first phone to an invited audience in Seattle: the four-camera ‘Dynamic Perspective’ head-tracking display, the Firefly recognition button, Mayday support and a year of Prime.

13. 2014

    Ignition 2014: the Business Insider interview

    A rare long-form interview, given weeks after Amazon wrote off $170 million of Fire Phone inventory and reported a $437 million quarterly loss.