The Amazon Kindle reader has been instrumental in the development of the e-book reader and e-book market. The original Kindle was released in November, 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 and took a 60% share of all e-book reader sales in the USA. Sony’s PRS reader, which was released in 2006 in advance of the Kindle reader, was in second place with a smaller, but still respectable, 35% share. Other companies saw the potential of the e-book reader market and launched or updated their own readers to get a slice of the pie.

Companies such as Plastic Logic, Sony, Barnes and Noble, Bookeen and iRex fought to secure their share of the new and fast developing e-book market, but the Kindle’s dominant market position seemed to be impregnable. 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.

Since the unveiling of the iPad, e-book reader prices have dropped quite some way. The Kindle 2.0 is currently selling for just $ 189, a huge reduction over the $ 359 launch price of February 2009. The large format Kindle DX has been upgraded, being fitted with a new improved screen, and has had a price reduction from $ 489 to just $ 379. The price of Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader also fell from $ 259 to $ 199.

Although the iPad seems to have provoked a round of price cuts among the manufacturers of e-book readers, the same cannot be said about the price of the e-books to read on these devices. Prior to the launch of the iPad, Apple had negotiated a deal with the major publishing houses which let them set the price of their e-book editions at pretty much whatever they wanted – as long as they did not allow the same e-book to be offered at a lower price on any other platform. This was seen as good news by the publishers, who had been unhappy with Amazon’s policy of selling all e-books for $ 9.99 or less.

Although Amazon may have had to rethink their e-book pricing policy, it’s not a major setback for them. Amazon has always appeared to be more interested in selling books – and e-books – rather than hardware. It’s difficult to see any other explanation for the fact that they have made Kindle books available on such a wide variety of different devices. Currently, you can read Kindle books on the PC, the Mac, your Blackberry, the iPod Touch, the iPad and any mobile device which runs Android. So companies like Amazon, Barnes and Noble and now Apple, who have a stake in the future sale of e-books over the life of a reader, can take the opportunity to sell the hardware for less and still make their profit over the lifetime of the device.

It may be that the future pricing of e-book readers and e-books will tend to favour such companies over manufacturers who are involved only in hardware production. Looking at the number of different devices which Kindle books can be read on, you would have to suspect that, whether or not the iPad becomes the reader of choice for many users, Amazon will continue to have a huge say in the future of books and e-books for the foreseeable future.

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Mobile & Cell Phones