The Amazon Kindle Remains In Demand
by tkahuna2
Filed under Massage Chair Review
Whilst it seems certain that the release of the Apple iPad has had an impact upon sales of Amazon’s Kindle reader, the internet retail giant doesn’t appear to be overly concerned. Following another price cut and an upgrade, the 6″ version of the Kindle has now sold out. Amazon currently estimate that there will be a four to five week hiatus before any new readers are shipped out. The larger Kindle DX version is currently still available.
The newest Kindle version sees the physical size of the unit shrink (whilst maintaining the same display size), a 15% reduction in weight and quicker page turns. There is now twice as much memory, allowing 3,500 Kindle books to be stored. A new high contrast, low glare, e-ink technology display, coupled with a battery life of up to one month (with Wi-Fi turned off) means that the Kindle the is the ideal reading device, whether at home or whilst travelling.
Customers can now choose from either white or graphite colors and the standard unit comes with both Wi-Fi and free 3G connectivity. A cheaper Wi-Fi only reader is included as an option for the first time for users who don’t anticipate the need for a 3G connection.
Amazon will also be marketing the Kindle directly from some of its international sites – starting in the UK. UK consumers can now buy their Kindle direct from Amazon UK rather than having it shipped from the USA. A dedicated UK Kindle book store will be launched, and no doubt similar arrangements can be anticipated for Germany and France at some point in future.
Amazon recently announced that Kindle books were outselling hardback versions on their US web store . In the last month, Amazon has sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 traditional hard cover versions. They seem very confident that the future of reading is going to be digital – and these figures do seem to suggest that this is probable. E-book readers are, on a commercial basis at least, a fairly new development. On the basis of these figures, the reading public appears to have accepted e-book reader technology very rapidly.
Over the past few months, e-book reader prices have fallen significantly. The latest Kindle with 3G and Wi-Fi has a price of $ 189, which is significantly less than the $ 359 February 2009 launch price of the Kindle 2.0. At just $ 139, the price of the Wi-Fi only reader is getting into mp3 player territory. These prices may, or may not, have been driven down by the launch of the Apple iPad – but the hardware price was always going to fall, and it may yet have some way to go.
Whilst the cost of e-book reader hardware has been falling, the cost of the e-books themselves seems to have been edging upwards. This gives Amazon a very real competitive advantage over many of its competitors who are mainly interested in hardware manufacture and marketing. The huge library of Kindle books (over 630,000 at the moment and growing by the day) is a great asset for Amazon – as is the fact that, thanks to Amazon’s policy of releasing free Kindle “apps”, it’s possible to read (and buy) Kindle books on a wide range of different devices – such as the PC, the Mac, the Blackberry smart phone, the iPad, the iPhone and any device which runs Android. As the still developing e-book market matures and greater emphasis is placed on e-books as opposed to the hardware to read them on, Amazon appear to be very well placed to continue as the dominant player in the new electronic publishing world.