Amazon, using their Kindle reader family as a vehicle, has been a major player in the development of both the e-book reader and e-book market. The first Kindle was released in November of 2007. In February of 2009, the updated and enhanced Kindle 2.0 hit the market, quickly followed by the large format Kindle DX in the summer of the same year.
With a market share of 60% of all e-book readers sold in the USA, the Kindle readers dominated the market. Sony trailed in second place with a still respectable 35% share. Needless to say, other electronics manufacturers quickly saw the potential in the nascent e-book reader market and either developed or updated their own readers.
Manufacturers like Bookeen, Plastic Logic, Sony and Barnes and Noble worked hard to get their share of the rapidly developing market, but the dominance of the Kindle seemed pretty well established, if not unassailable. It was only when Apple launched their iPad that the Kindle faced any credible competition – despite the fact that the two devices were very different and, you would think, aimed at different target markets.
Since the launch of the iPad, e-book reader prices have fallen quite some way. The Kindle 2.0 is currently selling for just $ 189, a huge reduction over the $ 359 launch price of February 2009. The large format Kindle DX has been upgraded, being fitted with a new improved screen, and has had a price reduction from $ 489 to just $ 379. Barnes and Noble have also dropped the price of their Nook reader from $ 259 to $ 199.
The launch of the iPad may, or may not, have been instrumental in producing widespread reductions in the ticket price of e-book readers, but it was clearly a major factor in pushing the price of the e-books to read on these devices upwards. Apple had set up its own book store prior to the launch of the iPad and had negotiated a deal with the major publishing firms which allowed them to fix the price of their e-book editions at whatever level they wanted – as long as the e-book was not made available on any other platform for a lower price. This pretty much killed the Amazon policy of setting e-book prices at $ 9.99 or less and was a welcome development for the publishers who were concerned about their profits reducing.
Although Amazon had to modify their approach, it wasn’t all bad news for them – or for Barnes and Noble either. Amazon had always given the impression that they were much more interested in book sales – and e-book sales – than they were in hardware sales. How else to explain the fact that they had bent over backwards to make it possible to read Kindle books on such a wide variety of different devices? It’s possible to read Kindle books on the PC, the Mac, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the iPad, the Blackberry and any mobile device that runs Android. The latest price movements mean that Amazon, and other companies such as Barnes and Noble – and now Apple – who have a significant stake not just in the sale of hardware but also in the sale of e-books, can adopt a policy of selling the hardware cheap and making their profit in the sale of e-books over the life of the reading device.
It may be that the future pricing of e-book readers and e-books will tend to favor such companies over manufacturers who are involved only in hardware production. Looking at the number of different devices which Kindle books can be read on, you would have to suspect that, whether or not the iPad becomes the reader of choice for many users, Amazon will continue to have a huge say in the future of books and e-books for the foreseeable future.
Learn more about Amazon’s Kindle reader for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.
Tags: computers, ebook readers, ebooks, electrical items, ereaders, gadgets, personal electronics, technology, Uncategorized