In many ways, the Kindle e-book reader is the ideal product for Amazon. It's a great fit for the Amazon business model and benefits greatly from Amazon's well established association with books and reading.
The company's link to books, along with its brand recognition and the trust which that engenders gives consumers confidence that Amazon will not only support its e-book reader hardware in the long term, but that it will also make sure that there is a wide choice of reasonably priced e-books for use with the reader hardware.
In fact, the combination of reader hardware and e-books has been a key factor in the success of the Kindle to date. The huge selection of Kindle books gives customers the confidence to buy Amazon's reader. Similarly, Kindle hardware sales result in additional sales of Kindle books.
Whilst that is intuitively true, if you want some positive proof, you only have to look at the sales spike which Kindle books see every January. The explanation for that is the fact that so many people wake up on Christmas morning to find a Kindle reader under the family tree.
Over the next few days and weeks, Kindle recipients will visit Amazon and download a few Kindle books for use with their newly acquired reader. Hence the annual sales spike in Kindle e-book sales every January.
The fact is that Kindle e-books and Kindle readers enjoy a very profitable symbiotic relationship. The huge selection of books gives customers the confidence to buy the reader hardware. Every new Kindle reader sale generates further sales of Kindle books. It's a virtuous circle which results in an upwards sales spiral for Amazon.
The recent introduction of the Kindle Fire tablet computer could result in Amazon finding itself in a similar position with downloadable movies. Don't forget, Amazon owns Netflix and, in the shape of the Kindle Fire, has once again paired hardware and software in much the same way that it matched up the Kindle reader and Kindle books.
That's what separates Amazon from many of its competitors right now - and it is one of the key factors in the almost total dominance of the Kindle reader. Amazon is providing both elements in the reading experience - it can provide access to both the medium and the message. If it can repeat the same trick with the Kindle Fire and movies (or software, or TV shows, or whatever grabs the public imagination), it could, quite conceivably, go on to dominate the tablet computer market just as it currently dominates the e-book reader market.
Hamish Hayward
Check out the Kindle ebook reader range and see which is the best ebook reader for you.
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