Amazon Kindle : Gaining Steam

Jason Perlow writes , to wipe out the cost of the Kindle completely, you have to buy and read six books per month to wipe out the Kindle’s cost over the course of one year. Oprah's new favourite seems to be picking steam. Reports suggest that Oprah helped in the dramatic increase in the Kindle search traffic.

Kari Sullivan, a Kindle owner notes that the Kindle helps her make better choices. Jason adds,

"for ordinary readers, it would seem that unless the convenience factor of the Kindle currently outweighs its costs, the Kindle is not a huge value proposition for your average consumer today. His proposition : if its cost were to drop approximately in half – say, between the 3 and 4 book per month level — at around $200 per unit – then we might start seeing greater e-book adoption by a larger segment of the population. At the two books per month level, it’s going to need to cost around $125.00 or $150.00 or so".

Here comes the recent announcement is that Google is planning to launch a digital media access device,which will start by selling online access to copyrighted, out-of-print books, and newer books could be available for sale if authors and/or publishers allow Google to sell them. The eBook market is getting more interesting though Google access device details are still awaited.

As I see it, the Kindle is definitely a big move for both the publishers and the readers. It is clearly as impactful as the iPod and a big catalyst of change in the market. Kindle is a real necessity for those :

A. Who travel few hours every working day using public transport

B. People who do business travel often

C. Who read at a minimum a full book a week

D. Class of people who like using a eReader while enjoying freebies like the internet access

My final thought is that eventually there may be a convergence of devices like GPS and Kindle (not the smartphone though - as it would be difficult to hold a phone that big and it would be aesthetically unappealing).

Labels: Amazon.com, Emerging Products, Kindle