Kindle Ebook Reader – A New Chapter In Reader Technology
The first Amazon kindle ebook reader launched in November 2007. It flew off the shelves, selling out in less than six hours and then remained out of stock until April 2008. It’s not unreasonable to assume that even Amazon were a little surprised by the instant 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. Among other improvements it sported an increeased battery life, quicker page turns, a text-to-speech facility (it reads books to you) and space for around 1500 books in its internal memory (even if the option to use an external SD card, a feature of the first kindle, was no longer available).
A mere three months later, in May 2009, Amazon announced that its new Kindle DX would be shipping in June of this year. The DX includes most of the main features of the kindle 2 but sports a larger 9.7″ display, which features automatic rotation between portrait and landscape mode. Also featured is the ability to read native pdf files without the need for conversion – for the first time in the Kindle range.
The extra size of the kindle DX makes it well suited for reading newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. Several major newspapers announced – long before the DX even went on sale – that they would be offering discounted Kindle prices to anyone taking annual subscriptions.
Amazon have not released official sales figures – however industry watchers estimate that something between $86 to $96 million of kindle reader sales were achieved between November 2007 and August 2008. Remember, that’s only the reader device itslef – sales of ebooks should be considered separately. Industry insiders are predicting that kindle sales (again just the device) will reach $ 1.6 billion by 2012.
Good business for Amazon – and a significant move away from only marketing other manufacturer’s products to having their own product to bring to market. Just as important is the fact that, whilst not actually tied in, Kindlers will be inclined to provide Amazon with the type of repeat sales that the majority of other merchants could only dream of.
