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The Amazon Kindle reader has been instrumental in the development of the e-book reader and e-book market. The original Kindle launched in November of 2007. The Kindle 2.0 was released in February of 2009 and the large format Kindle DX followed in the summer of the same year.

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.

Companies such as Sony, Barnes and Noble, Bookeen, Plastic Logic and iRex did their best to get their share of the new and fast developing e-book market, but the Kindle’s dominance looked to be pretty much unassailable. It wasn’t until the launch of the Apple iPad that the Kindle had any credible competition – even although the two devices were very different and would appeal, you would imagine, to different audiences.

Differences in the devices and their intended applications notwithstanding, e-book reader prices have tumbled since the launch of the iPad. You can now pick up the Kindle 2.0 for just $ 189 – a huge reduction over the launch price of $ 359 – and a significant drop from the pre-iPad price of $ 259. The newly upgraded Kindle DX can be yours for just $ 379, down from $ 489. Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader is now on sale at 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.

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.

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.

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

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