Kindle Ebook Reader – A New Chapter In Reader Technology
The first Amazon kindle ebook reader launched in November 2007. It sold out in five and a half hours and was then out of stock until April 2008. It’s probably reasonable to suppose that even Amazon was somewhat taken aback by the immediate success of the device.
The updated Amazon kindle 2 went on sale in late February of 2009 and it was widely believed to be a marked improvement on what was an already successful product. Included among a number of improvements were; improved battery life, faster page turning, a text-to-speech facility (it will read books to you) and space for around 1500 books in its onboard memory (albeit that the option to use a separate SD card, a design feature of the original kindle, was now removed).
A mere three months later, in May 2009, Amazon announced that its new Kindle DX would be shipping in June of this year. Most of the key features of the Kindle 2 are included in the DX, but it has a larger 9.7″ display, which includes automatic rotation from portrait to landscape mode. Also included, for the first time in the kindle range, is the ability to handle native pdf files without the need for translation.
The larger size of the kindle DX makes it ideally suited for reading magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks. A number of major newspapers announced – even before the DX went on sale – that they would offer discounted prices for the kindle to anyone signing up to annual subscriptions.
Amazon are keeping their cards pretty close to their chest – but it’s estimated that somewhere between $86 to $96 million of kindle reader sales were generated between November 2007 and August 2008. Don’t forget, that’s only for the reader itself – the sales of ebooks must be separately considered. Industry watchers are predicting that sales for the kindle (the reader device only) will reach $ 1.6 billion by 2012.
Excellenet business from Amazon’s point of view – and a very significant move away from only promoting other manufacturer’s goods to having their own product to put in front of the buying public. More importantly, whilst not exactly locked in, kindle customers will be heavily motivated to provide Amazon with a level of repeat business that most other vendors can only fantasise about.
