After two years of total domination by Amazon, it's looking like there is now some genuine competition emerging in the e-book market. The Amazon Kindle reader may even be knocked off the top spot in the not too distant future.
There are a large number of manufacturers who are getting ready to launch new e-book reader hardware - some before the end of 2009, some early next year. The launch of no fewer than three new readers has been confirmed by Sony. The Sony Daily Edition reader - due to launch in December 2009 - is probably the most significant of these. It will have touch screen controls, 3g wireless connection and will let users borrow e-books on loan from participating lending libraries.
Other manufacturers, including Plastic Logic and Apple, will have new readers on offer in the near future.
The technical specification of e-book readers is certainly a very important factor. However, in the final analysis, it may not be the most important aspect in determining success. Amazon currently have a huge selection of books to download for the Kindle on their website - over 300,000 are available (and increasing every day). Unfortunately, if you have a Kindle, then you are pretty well tied to buying your books from Amazon. If you want to change to a different reader later on, you won't be able to port your Kindle books over to it due to the proprietary format. Maybe in future some transfer option will be made available - but right now it's Kindle books for the Kindle reader.
Most of the other manufacturers seem to be lining up behind one common format - ePub - which is different from that currently used by Amazon. This would give users the freedom to transfer e-books from one reader to another and also afford them more choice when deciding where to buy their e-books from in the first place.
If, as seems likely, ePub becomes the standard across the industry, then it may well be the case that what is currently a competitive advantage for Amazon may turn into a liability. Certainly, it would be possible for Amazon to recover the situation by making their e-books compatible with whatever industry standard is adopted - either by the provision of a translation facility or simply by adopting the new standard themselves.
It does look as if there is going to be strong competition in the e-book arena in the immediate future. This is good news for consumers as strong competition, coupled with standardization, will produce a downward pressure on prices.
Author Resource:
Learn more about theAmazon Kindle reader and find out how to get free Kindle books direct from Amazon's website.
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