2009 has been a good year for Amazon, and a lot of their success has been due to the Kindle ebook reader. The original Kindle was launched in November 2007. It sold out in five and a half hours and new stock wasn’t available for months.
Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February of this year, and it featured several enhancements over the original model. They then followed up very quickly with the large format Kindle DX. Amazon now had a “family” of Kindles and, helped by a fair bit of free publicity from bestselling writers like Stephen King, partnerships with universities and colleges together with a lot of discussion by political bodies, the Kindle quickly became synonymous with e-book readers.
Of course, Amazon’s competitors were also checking out the nascent e-book reader market and wondering how to get their share. Currently, there is a very impressive list of manufacturers who all have their own e-book readers in development. Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Barnes and Noble and Asus are just a sample of the competition lining up against Amazon.
Any e-book reader that shows potential is immediately given the title of “Kindle Killer”. The various technical features of each reader are pored over and reported upon, especially when, as in the case of Sony’s Daily Edition reader for example, it has a new feature (touch screen control) which the current Kindle lacks.
Nevertheless, as important as the technical features of e-book readers are, they are only part of the story. Some of the most important factors in the success of the Kindle were the enormous choice of titles available on Amazon’s website, the abiltiy to quickly download e-books – without any monthly fees – and Amazon’s brand recognition.
Many of the new readers will have wireless connectivity, and Barnes and Noble’s Nook will offer users a choice of over 1,000,000 titles. However, the single unifying theme that seems to be developing is the emergence of a standard e-book format.
The majority of the new readers in development seem to be going for a format known as ePub. However, the Kindle format is proprietary, which means that Kindle books can only be used on the Kindle reader.
Currently the Kindle is so dominant that it isn’t much of a problem. Nevertheless, it’s possible to imagine that, in the not too distant future, users may want the ability to lend books to friends and family or to port them from one type of reader to another.
In a very short space of time, the Kindle has become Amazon’s bestselling product – bar none. So Amazon won’t surrender their market leadership role without a struggle. Maybe next year will see the launch of the Kindle 4. It will almost certainly include a number of technical improvements – but could it be that Amazon might also adopt the ePub format, or perhaps provide some type of translation service?
Learn more about the Kindle reader and discover how you can save money by getting free Kindle ebooks direct from Amazon’s Kindle store.