Amazon is the world’s largest bookseller. It is also America’s biggest online retailer. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, the company now has separate websites in the UK, France, Germany, Canada and China. It is, whatever way you look at it, an extremely successful business.

Given its current level of success, it’s easy to forget just what a radical idea buying books online and having them delivered in the mail was at the time. Many investors and business analysts predicted trouble for Amazon during its formative years – and it was not until the end of 2001 that Amazon eventually made a profit.

After revolutionising the way that many people buy books, Amazon rapidly expanded into video, CDs, music, computer software and consumer electronics. Today there aren’t many consumer items that Amazon doesn’t sell. You can even buy your groceries from them if you wish.


As diversified and successful as Amazon is today, they still have an extremely strong association with books. Selling books is clearly an activity that the company is passionate about. So, when the original Amazon Kindle e-book reader was released in November of 2007, it soon became clear that this was a great product for Amazon – it slotted right in to their business model perfectly.

It’s also easy to forget that the Kindle wasn’t the first e-book reader – not by a long way. Franklin’s eBookman had been launched ten years earlier in 1999. Sony’s PRS reader also hit the market ahead of the Kindle when it launched in 2006. However, Amazon didn’t suffer too badly as a result of their tardiness. Thanks to their link with books, public awareness and trust in the Amazon brand, combined with the fact that there was a large, and ever expanding, selection of Kindle books and Kindle accessories to choose from, the Kindle rapidly overtook its competitors. In February of 2009 the upgraded Kindle 2.0 was launched, rapidly followed by the large format DX model, and Amazon’s leading position solidified even more. The Kindle went on to become Amazon’s top selling product and, during the festive season of 2009, the Kindle became Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever.

Currently, although the Kindle is still very definitely the top e-book reader on the market, the level of competition is increasing exponentially. Other e-book readers with color screens are available, some have touch screen functionality. After no more than a few short months the Kindle, as a piece of hardware, may be starting to show its age. However, to analyse the e-book reader market purely in terms of hardware specification would be to miss the point a little.

The fact of the matter is that Amazon, probably more than any other company today, know what the people who read a lot of books – their best customers in other words – want. That’s the reason why Amazon’s dominance of the e-book reader market is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Bear in mind, this is hardly the first revolution in reading that Amazon have initiated – they have the experience, the pedigree and the wherewithal.

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