Brown Book Loft Blog

E-books and e-book readers have been hot gadgets for quite some time now. In 2009, the e-book reader market really took off, and one of the major influences in this was the launch of Amazon’s Kindle.0 in February of that year. Amazon followed up with the large format Kindle DX in the summer of 2009 and, in the second half of the year, it seemed that electronics manufacturers were queuing up to launch their own e-book readers and get a share of the hot new market. The fact that practically every new reader which displayed any potential was immediately christened the “Kindle Killer” should give some idea of just how influential Amazon was to the market’s development. The Kindle reader was, very definitely, the industry standard that required to be matched and then beaten.

However, there was nothing to suggest that any new reader which would offer serious competition to the Kindle was anywhere in sight. It wasn’t until the launch of the Apple iPad – a very different device – that there was any serious threat to the Kindle’s dominance. Even then, the death of the Kindle as a result of consumers turning to the iPad just doesn’t seem to have materialised. Shortly after the release of the upgraded third generation Kindle in August 2010 Amazon, for the umpteenth time it seems, had sold out of the devices and prospective customers faced a wait of several weeks before their new readers could be shipped.

Certainly, the high sales figures of the upgraded Kindles were driven, to a certain extent, by a price cut. Amazon introduced a new Wi-Fi only Kindle for just $ 139 for customers who didn’t have any need for 3G connectivity. If you remember that the Kindle 2.0 was selling for $ 359 at its February 2009 launch, that’s a very significant price reduction. It moves the Kindle – and e-book readers in general – much closer to the sub $ 100 impulse buying zone for personal electronic devices. It’s debatable whether or not the iPad’s release prompted this. The price reduction would have happened anyway, but there is still a lot of scope for further price cuts – and probably in the not too distant future.

Amazon and Apple may be enjoying a good deal of success, but the same cannot be said for other e-book reader manufacturers. A number of planned e-book readers have either been delayed or completely cancelled. The Plastic Logic Que reader, for example, is pretty well dead in the water. The Dutch company Irex, an apparently well established business, went bankrupt after US sales of their Irex reader failed to meet expectations. Sprint and Hearst’s planned Skiff has been cancelled.

Are we heading towards a polarised market with Amazon dominating the low cost “pure” e-book reader sector and Apple cleaning up in the more expensive tablet computer that sometimes serves as an e-book reader market? There’s a large gap in the prices of the Kindle and the iPad. Is there sufficient space between the two devices, in terms of both specification and price levels, to allow new players to enter the market?

Recently Amazon confirmed that sales of Kindle books are outstripping the sales of hard cover books. It seems highly probable that e-book sales will catch up with and eventually overtake paperback sales – and probably in the not too distant future. It seems certain that e-books are going to be an important part in the future of reading, but just what type of device will you use to read them on?

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.