Can Anybody See A Kindle Killer?
This has been a big year for e-book readers – thanks mainly to Amazon’s efforts. The Kindle 2 was launched in February of 2009, which is an improved version of the first Kindle, originally released in November 2007.
A few short months later, Amazon launched the large format Kindle DX reader. This was targeted at readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks – and it caused a bit of a stir.
The potential uses in the academic environment – from constantly updated texts to interactive textbooks – and not forgetting the possibility that academic institutions and bodies could save a good deal of money – attracted a lot of attention and speculation. As well as signing partnership agreements with a variety of universities and colleges, Amazon got a lot of free publicity from political bodies – for example, the New Democratic Leadership Council (of which Hillary Clinton is a member) and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California.
The reward for Amazon’s innovation – admittedly helped by a lot of buzz and free publicity – was that the Kindle, in a very short space of time, became Amazon’s best selling product – bar none. Right now, the Kindle enjoys a staggering 60% share of the U.S. e-book market and Amazon have very recently gone global with their Kindle International.
It’s probably worth reflecting upon the fact that Amazon were a late entrant to the e-book reader market. The original e-book reader, generally agreed to be the Franklin eBookman, was launched a decade ago in’99. Even Sony’s PRS reader beat Amazon to market.
Although Amazon were not first to launch, by combining innovation, marketing and addressing perceived customer needs, thay have carved out a market leadership position for themselves. The wireless connectivity and the huge, 360,000 strong, collection of Kindle books available on the Amazon website were every bit as important as the technical features of the Kindle.
Now that Amazon has – practically single handed – developed the market, it looks like every man and his dog want a piece of the action. Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Barnes and Noble, iRex, Plastic Logic, Asus – the list continues – all have their own readers due for release or in the late stages of the development cycle.
Wireless connectivity – currently only on offer from the Kindle – will become normal. Users of Barnes and Noble’s new Nook reader will be able to choose from over 1,000,000 downloadable e-books at the company’s site. The Daily Edition reader from Sony will alow users to download e-books from participating libraries for a pre-defined loan period. There will be convergence on some industry standard e-book format in 2010 and this will let users transfer books from one reader to another or lend them to family and friends – just like a real book.
Currently many industry analysts are casting their eye over the new readers and trying to predict which of them will be the long awaited Kindle killer. Whilst the competition is impressive, Amazon has shown a lot of commercial awareness thus far, so don’t expect them to yield the number one slot without a fierce struggle. After the launch of the original Kindle it took less than eighteen months for Amazon to launch the hugely improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. You can be sure that Amazon has plans for the future development of the Kindle. Could it be that the real Kindle killer will be the Kindle 4 and that we might see this in 2010?
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