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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. E-book readers really took off in 2009. 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 has a 60% share of the American e-book reader market – Sony is in second place with a 35% share. Both the Kindle models are now on sale in more than 100 countries around the world. The choice of e-book readers has increased, a number of new models from different suppliers are available today. However, there is little doubt that the Amazon Kindle is the market leader.
The fact that any new e-book reader that shows any promise is immediately dubbed the “Kindle killer” only serves to underline the current dominance of Amazon’s Kindle reader. Amazon has responded to the increased competition level by reducing the price of the Kindle 2 by $100 to $259. At the moment, the price of the DX model is unchanged, but the recent introduction of the Apple iPad may see Amazon revising this price also in the near future.
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 the competition, who seem to be concentrating on development of the hardware, Amazon are making advances in a number of different areas. 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 interesting to see what updates Amazon decides to include with the next Kindle reader upgrade. 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. A variety of different dates are being predicted by various industry watchers for the next Kindle update. Bearing in mind that the Kindle 2 is over a year old, it seems almost guaranteed 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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