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The Kindle reader has been a fantastic product for Amazon since it was first released in November of 2007. Amazon’s strong association with both electronics and books made the Kindle the ideal product for them and, after an upgrade to the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, followed by the launch of the large format DX model in the summer of the same year, it went on to become the number one selling product on the Amazon site.

The Kindle became Amazon’s most gifted item ever over the 2009 festive season – and, on Christmas day of the same year, Kindle book downloads outnumbered orders for physical books for the first time ever. This was probably due to those people who were lucky enough to receive a Kindle as a gift trying it out – and a lot of the downloads would have been free – but it was still a landmark event for both Amazon and the Kindle.

Despite the huge success of the Kindle reader, there were times when Amazon appeared to be a somewhat reluctant manufacturer. They went to a great deal of trouble to make sure that Kindle books could be read on a wide variety of different devices by people who didn’t own Kindles. Currently there are free Kindle “Apps” for the PC, the Mac, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the new iPad, the Blackberry and any device running Android. At times, Amazon looked to be in competition with itself.

However, the reasoning behind Amazon’s open policy became clear with the release of the Apple iPad. Among its many features, the iPad can be used to read e-books, and the price of e-book readers went into free fall as Apple enthusiasts rushed to get their hands on Apple’s new device. However, even as e-book reader prices were plummeting, the average price of the e-books for use with them was climbing.

Prior to the release of the iPad, Apple had negotiated a deal with the major publishing houses which allowed them to set the price of the e-book editions of their publications at pretty much whatever level they liked. The only rider was that the same e-book could not be offered at a lower price for any other reader – Amazon’s Kindle for example. Up until that point it had been Amazon’s policy to price e-books at $9.99 or less. Apple’s deal, much to the delight of the publishers, pretty much blew that out of the water. At first glance, Amazon looked to have been hit pretty hard by the release of the iPad.

However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that Amazon’s policy of releasing free Kindle Apps for just about every device known to man was a master stroke. Each App is nothing more than an outlet for Kindle books and, given that the price of these is increasing, Amazon can now afford to drop the price3 of their Kindle reader hardware secure in the knowledge that they will make a profit from the sale of e-books over the lifetime of the reader. For that matter, even if the iPad – or any other reader – seriously dented the sale of Kindle readers, Amazon would continue to sell their Kindle books.

Check out the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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