Will Amazon Launch The Kindle 4 In 2010?
This has been a big year for e-book readers – thanks mainly to Amazon’s efforts. The Kindle 2 was launched in February of 2009, which is an improved version of the first Kindle, originally released in November 2007.
In June of 2009, Amazon released the Kindle DX, a large display version of the Kindle 2. It was quite deliberately aimed at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a commotion.
The potential uses in the academic environment – from constantly updated texts to interactive textbooks – and not forgetting the possibility that academic institutions and bodies could save a good deal of money – attracted a lot of attention and speculation. As well as signing partnership agreements with a variety of universities and colleges, Amazon got a lot of free publicity from political bodies – for example, the New Democratic Leadership Council (of which Hillary Clinton is a member) and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California.
As a result of Amazon’s innovation and foresight – and greatly helped by free publicity – the Kindle has now become Amazon’s number one selling product. At the moment, the Kindle has an amazing 60% share of the American e-book reader market, and an international version has recently been launched. The Kindle is now synonymous with e-book readers.
It’s probably worth remembering that Amazon were, in fact, a somewhat tardy entrant to the e-book reader market. The Franklin eBookman is generally considered to be the original dedicated e-book reader, and this was launched ten years ago in’99. Sony’s PRS reader was launched in 2007, in advance of the launch of the original Kindle.
Although Amazon were not first to launch, by combining innovation, marketing and addressing perceived customer needs, thay have carved out a market leadership position for themselves. The wireless connectivity and the huge, 360,000 strong, collection of Kindle books available on the Amazon website were every bit as important as the technical features of the Kindle.
Now that Amazon has developed the market – almost single handedly it seems – it looks like there are plenty of other manufacturers who want their share. Sony, Asus, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Microsoft – the list goes on – all have readers ready for launch or in the final stages of development.
Wireless connectivity, currently one of Amazon’s strong selling points, will become standard and Barnes and Noble will offer users of their new Nook reader over 1,000,000 titles to choose from. Sony’s new Daily Edition reader will allow users to download e-books on loan from participating lending libraries. There will most likely be some standard e-book format adopted in 2010, and this will allow let users lend e-books to family and friends or port them over to other readers should they so wish.
Currently many industry analysts are casting their eye over the new readers and trying to predict which of them will be the long awaited Kindle killer. Whilst the competition is impressive, Amazon has shown a lot of commercial awareness thus far, so don’t expect them to yield the number one slot without a fierce struggle. After the launch of the original Kindle it took less than eighteen months for Amazon to launch the hugely improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. You can be sure that Amazon has plans for the future development of the Kindle. Could it be that the real Kindle killer will be the Kindle 4 and that we might see this in 2010?
Check out the Amazon Kindle ebook reader #1, and view the full range of Amazon Kindle accessories available.
