I suppose you are right. Kindle brand could be stronger if tight to e-ink eye confort and even black and white, which make the thing austere and monacal, and not toyish like iPad.
I don't know, is touchable e-ink coming in near future? Then they could have waited for that, and improve a lot Kindle OS (allow for plugins, real browsing, epub, viable pdf, email, etc) meanwhile.
Yeah touch has been around I have a sony reader that's at least 4-5 years old now that has a touchable e-ink display. The reasons they went with a lcd is color and response(refresh?) time on e-ink display. You can't watch a movie or play games or browse the web on e-ink kindles.
I don't know, is touchable e-ink coming in near future? Then they could have waited for that, and improve a lot Kindle OS (allow for plugins, real browsing, epub, viable pdf, email, etc) meanwhile.