Archive for the ‘e-book reader’ tag
Amazon Kindle - A Rapidly Evolving Concept
The first Amazon kindle ebook reader launched in November 2007. It sold out in less than six hours and remained out of stock until April 2008. It’s probably reasonable to assume that even Amazon themselves were surprised (pleasantly) by the initial huge demand for 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).
Just three short months later, in mid May of 2009, Amazon announced that its kindle DX would be released in the summer of this year. Most of the key features of the Kindle 2 are included in the DX, but it has a larger 9.7″ screen, which incorporates automatic rotation between portrait and landscape mode. Also featured, for the first time in the kindle range, is the ability to read native pdf files without the need for conversion.
The larger display of the kindle DX makes it perfectly suited for use with newspapers, magazines and student textbooks. A number of major newspapers announced that they would offer reduced prices for the kindle to anyone signing up to long term subscriptions.
Amazon steadfastly refuse to confirm sales numbers - but it’s widely believed that somewhere between $86 to $96 million of kindle reader sales were generated between the launch of the original Kindle in November 2007 and August 2008. Remember, that’s only the reader device itslef - sales of ebooks should be considered separately. Business analysts currently estimate that kindle sales (the device only) 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.