Knowledge Bubble

It’s been a big year for e-book readers – largely due to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon unveiled the Kindle 2 in February 2009, which was an updated and enhanced edition of the original Kindle which was launched in November 2007.

In June of 2009, Amazon followed up with the Kindle DX, which was a large display version of the Kindle 2. It was specifically aimed at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a stir.

The possibilities for academic use – from interactive textbooks to constantly updated texts, and not overlooking the opportunity for academic bodies to save a lot of money – attracted a lot of attention. As well as entering into agreements with a number of colleges and universities, Amazon gained a lot of free publicity from political bodies such as the New Democratic Leadership Council and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his capacity as Governor of California.

Thanks to Amazon’s foresight and innovation – aided by all the free publicity – the Amazon Kindle reader has now become Amazon’s best selling product. At the moment, the Kindle has an incredible 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market and has recently launched an international edition. The Kindle has now grown to be virtually synonymous with e-book readers.

It’s probably worth remembering that Amazon were, in fact, a late entrant to the e-book reader market. The original e-book reader, the Franklin eBookman, hit the market in 1999 – ten years ago. The Sony PRS reader was launched in 2007, before the launch of the Kindle 1.

Amazon might not have been first to market – but by combining marketing, technical innovation and responsiveness to customer needs, Amazon has reached its current dominant position. The large choice of books available for the Kindle on Amazon’s website and the wireless connectivity (with no monthly fee) were every bit as key to the Kindle’s success as were the technical features of the device.

However, now that Amazon has – almost single handedly – developed the market, it seems that all the other consumer electronics manufacturers want their share. Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Barnes and Noble, iRex, Plastic Logic, Asus – the list continues – all have their own readers ready for launch or in the late stages of development.

Wireless connectivity, currently one of Amazon’s unique selling points, will become normal and Barnes and Noble will offer users of their new Nook reader more than 1,000,000 titles to choose from.Sony’s new Daily Edition reader will allow users to borrow books on loan from participating lending libraries. Meanwhile, there will most likely be a standard e-book format adopted in 2010, which will let users lend e-books to family and friends or port them over to other readers if they want.

At the moment, many industry watchers are eyeing the line up of new readers and attempting to guess which one is the Kindle Killer. However, Amazon has been pretty smart thus far and they won’t give up their top position without a fight. It took them less than eighteen months after the launch of the first Kindle to launch the hugely improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. Amazon almost certainly has some ideas for the further development of their Kindle family. Could it be that the Kindle killer will actually be the Kindle 4 and that we could see this sometime in the next twelve months?