Bearing in mind the strong association that Amazon has with books and reading, it's hardly surprising that the Kindle reader has proved itself to be an excellent fit for the Amazon business model. E-book readers really took off in 2009. A lot of the credit for that must go to the Amazon Kindle, both the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX generated a great deal of publicity and were instrumental in bringing e-books to the attention of the public.
Currently, the Kindle is Amazon's number one selling product. It has a 60% share of the American e-book reader market - Sony is in second place with a 35% share. Both the Kindle 2 and DX model are now on sale in over 100 countries worldwide. There are a lot of new e-book readers, from a variety of different manufacturers, on the market now. However, there is little doubt that the Amazon Kindle is the market leader.
It seems that almost every new reader that shows any potential at all is immediately dubbed the "Kindle Killer". In a way, this is just serves to underline the fact that the Kindle is the benchmark for the industry at this time. Amazon's response to the increased level of competition has been to drop the price of the Kindle 2 from the original launch price of $359 to $259. Currently, no adjustment has been made to the price of the Kindle DX. However, the recent launch of Apple's iPad may mean that Amazon needs to consider a price drop for the Kindle DX sometime in the near future.
In addition to developing the Kindle hardware and increasing the size of the available market, Amazon has also worked to ensure that the choice of Kindle books available continues to increase. Currently there are over 420,000 Kindle books to choose from and this number is being added to at an average rate of 500 new books daily.
Unlike their competition, who seem to be very focused on developing e-book reader hardware, Amazon and advancing on a broad front. They are adjusting prices, issuing firmware updates for the existing Kindle, increasing the size of their market and constantly making further additions to the range of Kindle books available. In general, they are capitalising on their market leadership position and making the most of their strong link with books.
So far Amazon have pretty much defined the e-book reader market. It will therefore be very interesting to see what features they decide to incorporate in the next version of the Kindle reader. This will give us all a good idea of the way that the e-book reader market is heading in future. There is no agreement amongst industry watchers as to when we can expect the next Kindle to appear. However, remembering the fact that the Kindle 2 is now just over 12 months old, it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new, updated Kindle in 2010.
Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself - and have a look at the wide range of Kindle accessories available to let you customise and protect your reader.
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