The Netbook Review

Amazon must be absolutely delighted with the performance of its Kindle reader family in 2009. The Kindle 2.0 was launched in February and the large format DX followed shortly afterwards in June. The Kindle quickly became Amazon’s best selling product – even prior to the global launch of the Kindle 2.0 in October.

By the end of 2009′s festive season, the Kindle had become Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever and, on Christmas day, Amazon sold more Kindle books than they did traditional printed volumes. Of course, that was probably due to all those lucky people who had received a Kindle as a Christmas gift. In all probability, having opened their gift and got the Kindle out of the box, new owners would want to try out their new reader. That would probably have involved connecting to the Amazon website and downloading a Kindle book or two.

Nevertheless, selling more Kindle books than paperbacks and hardbacks is still a significant milestone. Even if some maintain that the method of realing this was just a little artificial then, when you think about it, that simply emphasises just what a good fit the Kindle is for Amazon’s business model.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s competition has been closely observing their success and taking steps to secure a share of the e-book reader market. The list of companies with e-book readers in development reads like a who’s who of consumer electronics multinationals. Microsoft, Apple, Sony and Samsung are just a small selection of the competitors who will be competing with Amazon in 2010. Not to overlook Barnes and Noble who have now entered the market with their new Nook reader.

Many of the next generation readers will incorporate features which will make the Kindle, in its current format at least, look out of date. Color displays, touch screen controls and an industry standard e-book format which will let users lend e-books to family and friends or even to borrow books from digital libraries are just some of the features which users can anticipate.

One thing’s for sure, Amazon will not sit on its hands while their competitors muscle in on the market which Amazon have done so much to develop. The present Kindles, although innovative only a few months ago, probably bear little resemblance to what e-book readers will be like in the near future. Amazon probably already has their next generation Kindle under development (the Kindle 4?) and, considering the level of drive and innovation that they have displayed thus far, Amazon will be probably be looking forward to even greater success during 2010. Kindle users can look forward to an updated, enhanced Kindle packed with new features – probably in the first half of 2010.

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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.

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