Only The Best Electronic Equipment

It’s been a big year for e-book readers – largely due to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon debuted the Kindle 2 in February 2009, which was an improved and enhanced version of the original Kindle which was released in November 2007.

In June of 2009, Amazon followed up with the Kindle DX, which was a large format version of the Kindle 2. It was specifically targeted at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a commotion.

The potential for academic use – from interactive textbooks to constantly updated texts, and not overlooking the possibility for academic bodies to save a lot of money – attracted a lot of attention. As well as signing agreements with a number of colleges and universities, Amazon got a lot of free publicity from political bodies such as the New Democratic Leadership Council and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his role as Governor of California.

Thanks to Amazon’s foresight and determination – aided by all the free publicity – the Amazon Kindle reader has now become Amazon’s top selling product. At the moment, the Kindle has an incredible 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market and has recently released an international version. The Kindle has now grown to be virtually a byword for e-book readers.

It’s probably worth noting that Amazon were, in fact, a late entrant to the e-book reader market. The original e-book reader, the Franklin eBookman, debuted in 1999 – ten years ago. The Sony PRS reader was launched in 2007, prior to the launch of the original Kindle.

Amazon may been late to market – but by combining marketing, technical innovation and an awareness of customer needs, Amazon has achieved its present dominant position. The large choice of books available for the Kindle on Amazon’s website and the wireless connectivity (with no monthly fee) were every bit as key to the Kindle’s success as were the technical features of the reader.

However, now that Amazon has – almost single handedly – developed the market, it seems that all the other consumer electronics manufacturers want their share. Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Barnes and Noble, iRex, Plastic Logic, Asus – the list goes on – all have their own devices set for release or in the final stages of development.

Wireless connectivity, presently one of Amazon’s powerful selling points, will become normal and Barnes and Noble will offer users of their new Nook reader over 1,000,000 titles to pick from.Sony’s new Daily Edition reader will allow users to borrow books on loan from participating lending libraries. Meanwhile, there will most likely be a standard e-book format adopted next year, which will allow users to lend e-books to friends and family or port them over to other readers if they wish.

Right now, a lot of industry insiders are checking out the line up of new readers and trying to identify which of them is the Kindle Killer. However, Amazon has been very astute thus far and they won’t surrender their top position without a fight. It took them under eighteen months after the release of the original Kindle to launch the much improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. Amazon almost certainly has big plans for the future development of their e-book readers. Could it be that the Kindle killer will actually be the Kindle 4 and that we could see this sometime in the next twelve months?