Amazon Kindle Success Is Due To Many Factors
The Kindle e-book reader has been a phenomenally successful product for Amazon. It’s currently the best selling product on the Amazon site. The Kindle accounts for 60% of all American e-book reader sales and both the Kindle 2.0 and the large format Kindle DX are now selling in over 100 countries around the world – increasing Amazon’s reach and hugely increasing their potential customer base.
At the moment,Sony are Amazon’s main competitor – with a35% share of the American e-book reader market. However, there are plenty of manufacturers who have watched the rapid development of the e-book reader market and now want a piece of the action. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) had a separate section for e-book readers for the first time ever. Over two dozen companies – some of them household names, others less well known – had e-book readers on display. This is a clear indication of the business community’s faith in the market.
What many of these aspiring manufacturers seem to have failed to notice is the fact that the reader’s technical features, whilst undoubtedly important, are part of the big picture. The success which Amazon has enjoyed with the Kindle reader to date has been the product of various factors over and above its technical specification. Amazon enjoys an almost unique position which affords it significant competitive advantages which are important when it comes to marketing e-books and e-book readers.
, the largest book seller in the world – bar none. In the eyes of the buying public, it therefore enjoys a very strong association with books. It also has a a long history with consumer electronic devices – as a merchant perhaps – but there is a strong perceived relationship nonetheless. In any event, the Kindle has now established Amazon’s credentials as a manufacturer (albeit the actual manufacture is subcontracted) in a big way.
So, in reality, any who think they can mount a serious challenge to Amazon just by releasing a reader which has a few more bells and whistles, or is a little bit, are probably going to get an unpleasant surprise when the sales returns start rolling in. It probably needs another very well known and trusted corporation to make any serious impact on the scene now. Companies such as Microsoft or Apple could be possible change agents – and they both have their own readers, or devices which could be used to read e-books at least, in development. Sony now have a well established e-book reader pedigree, so they must consider themselves to be a contender.Barnes and Noble could also be a contender.
One thing’s for sure, no small electronics company is about to break Amazon’s stranglehold on the market. Tie ups, such as Barnes and Noble’s agreement to provide e-books for the Que reader, might throw up some surprises. All the same, unless there is a truly surprising development in the offing, it seems as if the Kindle reader really is set to become the literary world’s equivalent of the iPod.
