Amazon has been an important, quite possibly the most important, player in the development of digital publishing using both their Kindle reader family and their huge library of Kindle books as development and marketing tools. November 2007 saw the launch of the original Kindle. Amazon followed up with the upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, and the large display Kindle DX model launched in the summer of 2009.
The Kindle readers dominated the market with a 60% share of all American e-book reader sales. Sony’s PRS reader – which was actually available in 2006, some time before the Kindle – followed in second place with a 35% market share. Other companies quickly saw the huge potential of the rapidly developing e-book reader market and either launched or updated their own readers in order to get a share of the available sales.
Competitors like Plastic Logic, Sony, Bookeen, iRex and Barnes and Noble fought for their share of the rapidly growing market, but Amazon’s lead position seemed to be almost impregnable. It was only with the launch of the Apple iPad that any credible competition emerged – slightly surprising since the two devices are very different and are, you would suppose, aimed at different market segments.
Nevertheless, since the release of the iPad, e-book reader prices have pretty much gone into free fall. The Kindle 2.0, which retailed for $ 359 at its February 2009 launch is now priced at just $ 189. The Kindle DX, which has just had a mini makeover and now sports a new higher contrast screen, has had its price slashed from $ 489 to $ 379. Still a pricey piece of kit, but a lot cheaper than before and also way cheaper than even the entry level iPad (which also has a monthly connection fee associated with it). The price of the Barnes and Noble Nook reader has also dropped to just $ 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.
Amazon may have had to abandon their low e-book price policy – but that wasn’t necessarily a disaster for them. Considering the way that Amazon have made it possible to read Kindle books on such a wide variety of different devices – you can use the PC, the Mac, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the iPad, your Blackberry and any device which runs Android to read Kindle books right now (and no doubt there will be further additions in future) – it must be obvious that Amazon are more interested in book sales than hardware sales. The latest downward price movement for e-book readers and simultaneous price increase for e-books means that they can now sell the hardware for less and make their profit by selling e-books over the life of the hardware. The same will apply for Barnes and Noble and Apple themselves of course.
Companies which sell books and hardware may have a distinct advantage over hardware manufacturers in the near future. Looking at the huge number of different devices (outlets) that Kindle books can be read on, it seems likely that Amazon are going to have a big say in the future development of digital publishing going forward.
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Hamish Hayward Technologies computers, ebook readers, ebooks, electrical items, ereaders, gadgets, Personal Electronics, Technologies, technology, Uncategorized
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