Brown Book Loft Blog

Bearing in mind the strong association that Amazon has with books and reading, it’s hardly surprising that the Kindle reader has proved itself to be an excellent fit for the Amazon 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 the Kindle DX generated a great deal of publicity and were instrumental in bringing e-books to the attention of the public.

The Kindle has become Amazon’s top selling product. It has a 60% share of the USA’s e-book reader market – Sony are in second place with approximately a 35% market share. Both Kindle models are now on sale in more than 100 countries around the world. There are a large number of new e-book readers from different manufacturers available on the market just now. Nevertheless, the Amazon Kindle remains the market leader by some way.

It’s a backhanded compliment to Amazon that practically every new reader that shows any potential whatsoever is given the title of the “Kindle Killer”. This simply serves to confirm the fact that the Kindle has become the industry benchmark against which all other readers will be measured. Amazon, in response to increased competition levels, has already dropped the price of the Kindle 2 by $100 since it was launched in February 2009. There has been no adjustment to the price of the Kindle DX thus far. However, the launch of the Apple iPad at the end of March 2010 may mean that Amazon will wish to re-evaluate the pricing policy of the Kindle DX.

As well as developing the Kindle hardware and growing the size of its potential market, Amazon has continued to ensure that Kindle users have a good choice of Kindle books available for reading on their Kindles. At the time of writing there are more than 420,000 Kindle books available on the Amazon site – a number of which is growing at an average rate of 500 new titles each and every day.

Whereas Amazon’s competitors are focusing strongly on the development of the hardware side of the e-book reader market, Amazon are making progress in a number of different areas. They are making price adjustments, producing firmware updates for the existing Kindle models, expanding the size of their market and continually increasing the number of Kindle books available for their customers to choose from. In short, they are taking full advantage of their market domination and also profiting from their very strong link to both books and reading.

So far Amazon have pretty much defined the e-book reader market. It will therefore be very interesting to see what features they decide to incorporate in the next version of the Kindle reader. This will give us all a good idea of the way that the e-book reader market is heading in future. There is no agreement amongst industry watchers as to when we can expect the next Kindle to appear. However, remembering the fact that the Kindle 2 is now just over 12 months old, it seems reasonable to assume that we will see a new, updated Kindle in 2010.

Discover the Amazon Kindle for yourself – and have a look at the wide range of Kindle accessories available to let you personalise and protect your reader.