Will 2010 See The Launch Of The Amazon Kindle 4?

In RC Planes of rcplanes (January 29, 2010 11:42 pm)

It’s been a huge year for e-book readers – largely due to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February 2009, which was an improved 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 format version of the Kindle 2. It was specifically targeted at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a commotion.

The possibilities for academic use – from interactive textbooks to constantly 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 signing agreements with a number of colleges and universities, Amazon got 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 innovation – assisted by all the free publicity – the Amazon Kindle reader has now become Amazon’s top selling product. At the moment, the Kindle has an impressive 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market and has recently launched an international edition. The Kindle has become virtually synonymous with e-book readers.

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

Amazon may been late to market – but by a combination of smart, technical innovation and responsiveness to customer needs, Amazon has attained its present dominant position. The huge choice of ebooks available for the Kindle on Amazon’s website and the wireless connectivity (with no monthly fee) were every bit as crucial to the Kindle’s success as were the technical aspects of the reader.

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 goes on – all have their own devices ready for launch or in the final stages of development.

Wireless connectivity, presently one of Amazon’s strong selling points, will become standard 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 allow users to lend e-books to family and friends or port them across to other readers if they want.

Right now, many industry watchers are checking out the line up of new readers and attempting to guess which of them is the Kindle Killer. However, Amazon has been very astute thus far and they won’t give up their top position without a struggle. It took them under eighteen months after the launch of the first Kindle to launch the much improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. Amazon almost certainly has big plans for the further development of their e-book readers. Could it be that the Kindle killer will turn out to be the Kindle 4 and that we could see this sometime in 2010?