Amazon seemed to have found the perfect product in their Kindle reader. It was by far the market leader in the e-book reader arena, commanding a 60% share of all sales, and there was no real competition to speak of. Despite the release of competing e-book readers by other manufacturers such as Bookeen, Barnes and Noble and Sony, there was no genuine competition and the Kindle’s top position seemed to be unassailable.
However, Apple seemed intent upon spoiling the party when they released their long awaited iPad which, although an entirely different type of device, has the ability to read e-books. Most Apple devices seem to engender a love/hate reaction amongst consumers and there was no shortage of pundits and analysts ready to point out the shortcomings of Apple’s new device. However, the number of people who would buy practically any new gadget which has the apple logo on it is very definitely high enough to make a difference to the sales of Amazon’s Kindle reader.
As well as releasing new hardware, Apple also set up their own e-book store and they negotiated a deal with most of the major publishing houses which permitted them to set the sales price of the e-book editions of their publications at whatever they liked. The one condition to this was that they would not allow any other retailer to promote their e-book edition at a lower price than set for the Apple store. This effectively put paid to Amazon’s plans to offer all e-books at $ 9.99 or less, and e-book prices have been climbing since the deal was struck.
The price of the e-book readers themselves has fallen however. Barnes and Noble cut the price of their Nook reader to $ 199. Amazon’s Kindle 2.0 is now selling for just $ 189 – a huge reduction over the $ 359 launch price of February 2009. The Kindle DX can now be yours for just $ 379, a saving of $ 110 over the previous $ 489 ticket price.
Even the pricey DX model is now over $ 100 cheaper than the cheapest of the Apple iPad range. Neither does the iPad come with connection to the internet for free as is the case for the Kindle range. Of course, the iPad is much more than an e-book reader, so it may be that people are prepared to pay more for a more powerful and versatile device – even if it does have much poorer battery life and a less “reading friendly” screen (which excels for other applications).
It will be interesting to see whether this downward price movement of e-book readers is simply a temporary reaction to the iPad or whether it heralds the dawn of a new pricing policy. It could be that companies like Amazon and Barnes and Noble might take advantage of the trend for higher priced e-books by offering lower priced hardware secure in the knowledge that they will make their profit throughout the life of the device. Or it may simply be a stalling tactic until the next generation color Kindle hits the streets later this year.
Find out more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.
Tags: computing, ebooks, gadgets, personal electronics, product reviews, reading, technology, Uncategorized