A key factor in the success of the Amazon Kindle reader has undoubtedly been the number of Kindle books available for consumers to choose from. Currently, Kindle owners can choose from over 725,000 Kindle books – and that’s just the paid titles. Amazon also offer 1.8 million out of copyright books which can be downloaded to the Kindle free of charge.
It’s been roughly three years since Amazon released the original Kindle reader. Despite the massive influence of the Kindle, it’s worth recalling that it wasn’t the first ebook reader on the market. However, ebooks are now becoming very well established – largely due to the influence of the Kindle. Whether or not ebooks will eventually replace traditional printed books is open to debate – but they seem to be here to stay.
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.
It looked like Amazon had found the perfect product for their business model in the form of the Amazon Kindle reader. Its domination of the developing e-book reader market was almost total. It achieved around about a 60% market share (the Sony reader trailed in second with a 35% market share), and it was difficult to see, despite the fact that almost every new reader that was released was instantly given the title of the “Kindle Killer”, where the competition was going to come from.