Kindle Ebook Reader – Just How Good Is It?
The first Amazon kindle ebook reader launched in November 2007. It sold out in five and a half hours and was then 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 sported an increeased battery life, quicker page turns, a text-to-speech facility (it reads books to you) and space for around 1500 books in its internal memory (even if the option to use an external SD card, a feature of the first 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. For the first time in the kindle range the ability to read native pdf files without the need for conversion is included.
The enhanced display of the Kindle DX makes it the ideal choice 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 have not released official figures – but it’s believed that something between $86 to $96 million of kindle reader sales were generated between November 2007 and August 2008. Remember, that’s only the reader device itslef – sales of ebooks should be considered separately. Business analysts currently estimate that kindle sales (the device only) will reach $ 1.6 billion by 2012.
Excellenet business from Amazon’s point of view – and a very significant move away from only promoting other manufacturer’s goods to having their own product to put in front of the buying public. More importantly, whilst not exactly locked in, kindle customers will be heavily motivated to provide Amazon with a level of repeat business that most other vendors can only fantasise about.
