Will Amazon Launch The Kindle 4 In 2010?

2009 has been a big year for e-book readers – chiefly due to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February 2009, which was an updated and enhanced edition of the original Kindle which was released 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 targeted at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a commotion.

The potential for academic use – from interactive textbooks to continually updated texts, and not forgetting the opportunity for academic bodies to save a good deal 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 also Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his capacity as Governor of California.

Thanks to Amazon’s foresight and determination – aided by all the free publicity – the Amazon Kindle reader has now become Amazon’s top 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 noting 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 first.

Amazon may not have been first to market – but by a combination of marketing, technical innovation and responsiveness to customer needs, Amazon has attained its present dominant position. The huge choice of titles 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 – established the market, it seems that manufacturers of consumer electronics want their share. Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Barnes and Noble, iRex, Plastic Logic, Asus – the list continues – all have their own readers set for release or in the final stages of development.

Wireless connectivity, currently one of Amazon’s strong selling points, will become normal and Barnes and Noble will offer users of their new Nook reader more than 1,000,000 titles to pick 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 agreed in 2010, which will let users lend e-books to friends and family or transfer them across to other readers if they wish.

Right now, a lot of industry watchers are eyeing the line up of new readers and attempting to predict 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 struggle. It took them less than eighteen months following the release of the original Kindle to launch the much improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. Amazon almost certainly has big plans for the future development of their Kindle family. Is it possible that the Kindle killer will turn out to be the Kindle 4 and that we could see this sometime in 2010?