The Kindle Drives Good Results For Amazon
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 39 viewsWhen Amazon’s management team get together to consider the company’s performance in 2009, they will have good reason to feel content – but not smug. It’s been a very good year for the internet retail giant – and a lot of the credit must go to the Amazon Kindle reader.
The Kindle 2 launched in February of 2009. It was generally regarded as a big step forward. Amazon had clearly paid close attention to customer feedback concerning the original Kindle, which debuted in 2007. Wireless connectivity and the huge selection of Kindle books were retained and faster page turns, longer 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 targeted at readers of newspapers, magazines and academic textbooks. A little surprisingly perhaps, it was the conservative world of academic publishing that helped to gain the DX a lot of publicity.
The academic community very quickly realised the potential opportunities which the Kindle offered. Not only would it be very much faster to update textbooks 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 – a key factor for such establishments who have both budgets and environmental targets to meet these days.
As well as agreeing partnerships with a number of colleges and universities, Amazon profited from a lot of publicity generated by political bodies such as the New Democratic Leadership Council and Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – both of whom held forth on the educational benefits of e-book readers in general and the Amazon Kindle in particular.
However, as bright as things were looking for Amazon, there were indications that trouble was looming. Other manufacturers, having observed Amazon develop the e-book reader market, were now becoming aware of the huge potential of this nascent sector. An impressive list of competitors, including companies like Microsoft, Apple, Barnes and Noble and Sony, 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 in development which shows the slightest potential is immediately dubbed the “Kindle Killer”. The problem is that, at this time, in spite of 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 postponed. 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 is the most likely challenger. Might we expect to see it in the next twelve months?
