E-book readers have been around for a long time now. The first one, which is generally agreed to have been the Franklin eBookman, launched in 1999, more than ten years ago. Further devices subsequently hit the market, notably Amazon’s original Kindle in 2007 which actually lagged behind the Sony PRS reader which had launched in 2006.

It was only in 2009 that e-book readers really took off in a big way. Without ignoring the contribution of Sony in any way, much of the credit for this must surely go to Amazon. The Kindle 2.0 launch in February 2009 quickly followed by the launch of the Kindle DX with its large display in June caused quite a stir and established e-book readers as the hot gadget of the year. The Kindle rapidly established itself as Amazon’s top selling product and over the course of the 2009 festive season became the most gifted Amazon product ever. Both Barnes and Noble and Sony had released new readers of their own in advance of the Christmas season, but uncertainty about delivery in time for Xmas, coupled with the already established dominance of the Kindle reader meant that Amazon swept the boards.

There is currently a good selection of readers to choose from. The list of companies who have their own readers either in development or already available is both long and impressive. For the first time ever, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas in January 2010, had a separate section dedicated to e-book readers. Most industry analysts are predicting that 2010 is going to be an even more successful year for e-book readers and we can probably anticipate continuing growth in the rate of sales.

It is effectively a completely new market segment which didn’t exist, at least not in any significant way, until very recently. Apart from the companies who manufacture e-book readers, there are opportunities for publishers, academic establishments, third party manufacturers and of course, the reading public.

The sudden development of this market segment has proved to excellent news for companies such as M-Edge who manufacture a wide range of Kindle accessories including reading lights, covers, chargers and so on. There are many other accessory providers who are also profiting. Currently, there is a strong focus on products aimed at the Kindle reader, but as the market grows and other readers gain in popularity these will also offer profitable opportunities to the third party suppliers.

The e-book reader market is still in its infancy. It is growing and developing at an astonishing rate. Amazon was hugely influential in the development of the market up to now and enjoys a 60% share of the American market as a result. In 2010, their dominant position is going to be challenged, so too will Sony’s current second place (with a very healthy 35% market share). However, this new market offers plenty of opportunity for companies with the vision and innovative skills to establish themselves at this early stage.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Mobile Broadband. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.