Apart from being a very successful product for Amazon, the Kindle e-book reader, in its various forms, has been instrumental in putting both e-book readers and e-books on the map. It wasn’t the first e-book reader, not by some way. The Franklin eBookman launched in 1999 – over a decade ago – and Sony’s PRS reader hit the market in 2006, well before the first Amazon Kindle launched in November of 2007.
Things really took off in 2009 with the launch of the Kindle 2.0. The Kindle quickly became Amazon’s top selling product and was the clear market leader with a 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market. The fact that every new e-book reader which showed any potential whatsoever was instantly christened the “Kindle Killer” simply served to underline that the Kindle wasn’t just the market leader, but was the standard against which all other e-book readers would be judged.
The latest challenger for the Kindles’ top slot is the Apple iPad – and it could very well be the strongest contender yet. Is it the future of mobile computing or is it just a bigger version of the iPod Touch? At the end of the day it doesn’t matter much – it’s going to sell well for Apple.
Amazon’s reaction to this new threat to their Kindle dominance was to release an “app” that would let iPad users read Kindle books on their device. Not the most defensive move possible – and possibly an indication of just how threatened Amazon really feel by the iPad, or any other Kindle Killer for that matter.
Prior to the release of the app for the iPad Amazon had released apps for a wide range of different devices. There’s one for the Mac, the PC, the iPod and the Blackberry. Amazon seem to be going to a lot of effort to make Kindle books available on as wide a range of platforms as possible, and they don’t seem too concerned if that impacts upon the sales of Kindle readers.
You might reasonably suppose, based upon their actions to date, that Amazon are more interested in selling Kindle books than the hardware to read them on. You might also think that Amazon might have a good idea where the big money will be made in the future e-book market. Is this a bit like selling cheap razors to make big money selling blades?
Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.


