The Kindle Drives Excellent Results For Amazon
When the Amazon management team gather to look over the company’s performance in 2009, they will have good reason to feel content – but not smug. It’s been a great year for the internet retail giant – and much of the credit must go to the Amazon Kindle reader.
The Kindle 2 launched in February of 2009. It was widely regarded as a big step in the right direction. Amazon had clearly paid close attention to customer feedback concerning the original Kindle, launched in 2007. Wireless connectivity and the enormous selection of Kindle books were retained and faster page changes, extended battery life and increased storage capacity were among the improvements which were introduced.
Best selling author, Stephen King wrote a special Kindle book to mark the launch and the Kindle 2 quickly became the “must have” gadget among a blaze of publicity.
In June of 2009, just a few months later, Amazon released the Kindle DX. This had a large display and was intended to cater for readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, it was the stuffy world of academic publishing that helped to gain the DX a lot of publicity.
The academic community very quickly realised the potential benefits the Kindle offered. Not only would it be very much faster to keep textbooks updated but interactive education – pop quizzes and tests for example – would be possible. Academic bodies would not only save money as a result of using digital books, but they would be more environmentally friendly also – an important factor for such establishments who have both budgets and environmental targets to meet nowadays.
As well as establishing partnerships with a number of universities and colleges, Amazon benefited from a lot of publicity created by political bodies such as the New Democratic Leadership Council and Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – both of whom waxed lyrical on the educational benefits of e-book readers in general and the Amazon Kindle in particular.
However, as rosy as things were looking for Amazon, there were indications that trouble was looming. Other manufacturers, having seen Amazon develop the e-book reader market, were now becoming aware of the massive potential of this nascent sector. An impressive list of competitors, including companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sony and Barnes and Noble, wanted their share – and they all had their own readers in development.
It’s a compliment to Amazon – albeit a backhanded one that virtually every ebook reader under development which shows the slightest potential is immediately given the title of the “Kindle Killer”. The trouble is that, at this time, and despite all the development work by the competition, Amazon is still the only game in town. Sony’s Daily Edition reader and the Nook from Barnes and Noble have both had their launch dates put back. In fact, it looks ever more likely that the most probable source of the long awaited Kindle Killer would be Amazon itself. The Kindle 4 looks like the most likely challenger. Can we hope to see it in 2010?
