Growing The E-Book Market – With The Amazon Kindle Reader
Considering the very strong link that Amazon have with books and reading it’s no surprise that the Amazon Kindle reader has proved itself to be a very good fit for Amazon’s business model. During 2009, e-book readers really took off. A lot of the credit for that must go to the Amazon Kindle, both the Kindle 2 and DX produced a lot of publicity and helped to establish the e-book reader market in the general public awareness.
Presently the Kindle is Amazon’s best selling product. It enjoys a 60% share of the US e-book reader market – Sony takes second place with 35%. Both the Kindle models are now on sale in more than 100 countries around the world. There is a wide choice of new e-book readers on the market, from a number of different manufacturers, right now. However, the Kindle is very definitely the current market leader.
In a way, it’s a compliment to Amazon that every new reader which shows any promise whatsoever is immediately christened the “Kindle killer”. Amazon has responded to the greater competition levels by lowering the price of the Kindle 2 to $259 from $359 (the original launch price). The price of the DX model is currently and changed, but the recent launch of the Apple iPad may mean that Amazon need to consider reviewing this price in the near future also.
As well as developing the Kindle hardware and expanding into new markets, the choice of Kindle books available on the Amazon website continues to grow. At the time of writing, there are in excess of 420,000 Kindle books available on Amazon’s site – and an average of 500 new titles is added daily.
Unlike their competition, who seem to be very focused on developing e-book reader hardware, Amazon and advancing on a broad front. They are modifying prices, producing firmware updates for the current Kindle, growing the size of their available market and constantly adding to the selection of Kindle books available. Amazon is certainly making the most of their current market leadership position and benefiting from a strong link with books.
It will be very interesting to note what enhancements Amazon decides to incorporate in the next iteration of the Kindle. This will provide a very clear indication of the way in which the e-book reader market is likely to develop in the near future. Different business analysts are forecasting a variety of dates for the next Kindle update. Given that the Kindle 2 is now over a year old it is almost certain that this will take place in 2010. Some time in the last six months of the year is the most likely timescale according to many industry watchers.
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