Why The Kindle E-Book Reader Is Such A Good Fit For Amazon’s Business Model
has proven itself to be the perfect product for Amazon. Considering that Amazon has, in the perception of the buying public, a very strong link with both books and electronics the Kindle is a great fit for Amazon’s business model.
Over the course of 2009, e-book readers as a whole, and especially the Kindle, became the cool “must have” personal electronics devices of the year. It’s predicted that sales will continue to grow at an almost exponential rate throughout 2010. The market is still very new and is changing and developing at lightning speed.
At the moment, the Kindle is the leader of the pack. It currently enjoys an impressive 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market. Sony is in second place with a smaller but nonetheless creditable 35% market share. There are a whole host of competitors who have now developed e-book readers of their own in order to get a piece of the action in what is forecast to become a large and lucrative market.
In a way, it’s a back-handed compliment to Amazon that practically every new e-book reader that displays and potential is instantly hailed as the “Kindle Killer”. However, considering the fact that the Kindle is now Amazon’s best selling product, you can be sure that Amazon will be fighting tooth and nail to hang on to the lead position.
Amazon has responded to the increased competition by lowering the price of the Kindle 2.0 by $ 100 from its February launch price to $ 259. The price of the Kindle DX, which probably has a little less competition just at the moment, remains unchanged. There have also been firmware updates, including prolonged battery life and the addition of pdf support for the Kindle 2.0, among others.
Amazon has also now released both the Kindle 2.0 and the DX in over 100 countries worldwide. In fact, Amazon could probably sell Kindles in the States as fast as it could manufacture them – but developing an international Kindle presence is probably a very smart move in the long term.
Over and above enhancing the Kindle reader itself and expanding into new markets, Amazon continues to increase the library of Kindle books available on its Kindle store. Right now there are over 400,000 titles available – and this number is increasing at an average rate of 500 each and every day.
So, even although there are a lot of manufacturers scrambling to develop e-book readers in order to break into the market, Amazon is probably quietly confident. Rather than simply focusing on hardware development, Amazon is making improvements in a number of different areas. They are improving the existing Kindle, tweaking prices, growing their market, expanding the selection of available books and generally capitalising on their dominant market position. Whenever they decide to launch the Kindle 4 – expect to see it sometime in 2010 – they will simply consolidate their leadership position even further.
