Kindle Is Amazon’s ‘Most Gifted’ Item Ever After Christmas
Amazon must be cock-a-hoop with the sales results for its Kindle reader family duringin 2009. February saw the launch of the Kindle 2.0 and the DX followed hard on its heels in June. The Kindle very rapidly achieved the position of Amazon’s best selling product – even before the global launch of the Kindle 2.0 in October.
During the 2009 festive season, the Kindle became Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever and, on Xmas day 2009, Amazon sold more Kindle books than they did traditional printed volumes. In all probability that would have been due to all those lucky people who had woken up to find a Kindle in their stocking on Christmas morning. It seems reasonable to suppose that, after opening their gift and got the Kindle out of the box, proud new Kindle users would wish to test their new toy. That would probably have involved connecting to the Amazon Kindle store and grabbing a Kindle book or two.
Nevertheless, selling more Kindle books than paperbacks and hardbacks is still a major achievement. If some feel that the manner in which this was achieved was a little artificial then maybe that simply underlinesNeedless to say Amazon’s competitors have been enviously eyeing their success and taking steps to ensure that they get a share of the new e-book reader market. The list of companies with e-book readers under development reads like a who’s who of consumer electronics household names. Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Samsung are just a sample of the manufacturers who will be going head to head with Amazon in 2010. Not to mention Barnes and Noble who have now released their own Nook e-book reader.
Many of the next generation readers will have features which will make the Kindle, in its current format at least, look somewhat dated. Touch screen controls, color displays and a new industry standard format for e-books which will letusers to lend e-books to friends and family or even to take out books on loan from participating lending libraries are just a sample of the features which users can expect in the near future.
One thing’s for sure, Amazon will not stand and watch whilst their competitors muscle in on the market which Amazon has done so much to develop. The current Kindles, as innovative as they were just a few short months ago, probably bear little resemblance to what e-book readers will be like in the (very) near future. Amazon is probably already working on their next generation Kindle (the Kindle 4?) and, based upon the level of innovation and drive they have displayed so far, Amazon would be justified in being quietly confident of achieving further success in 2010. Kindle users can look forward to an updated, enhanced Kindle loaded with new features – probably in the first six months of 2010. We can also expect Amazon to keep expanding the selection of Kindle books available on its Kindle store – so users will have the ideal combination of hardware and software.
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