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 fair to say that even Amazon was surprised by the immediate 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 boasted an improved battery life, faster page turns, a text-to-speech facility (it reads books to you) and space for around 1500 books in its internal memory (albeit that the option to use an external SD card, a feature of the original kindle, was no longer available).
Just three months later, in May 2009, Amazon announced that its kindle DX would be launching in the summer of this year. The DX features most of the key features of the kindle 2 but has a larger 9.7" display, which features 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 extra size of the kindle DX makes it well suited for reading newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. A number of major newspapers announced - even before the DX went on sale - that they would offer discounted prices for the kindle to anyone signing up to annual subscriptions.
Amazon are keeping their cards pretty close to their chest - but it's estimated that somewhere between $86 to $96 million of kindle reader sales were generated between November 2007 and August 2008. Don't forget, that's just the reader device - the sales of electronic books needs to 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. More importantly though, whilst not exactly tied in, kindle users will be heavily motivated to provide Amazon with a level of repeat sales that other merchants can only dream of.
Hamish Hayward
Amazon Kindle Ebook Reader
Discover the new kindle from Amazon. You'll be surprised at it's wealth of new features.
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