E-book Reader Prices Tumble Due To The Launch Of The Ipad

Amazon has been an important, quite possibly the most important

, player in the development of digital publishing using both their Kindle reader family and their huge library of Kindle books as development and marketing tools. November 2007 saw the launch of the original Kindle. Amazon followed up with the upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, and the large display Kindle DX model launched in the summer of 2009.

With a 60% share of the American e-book reader market, the Kindle was the clear leader. The Sony reader, which was actually launched in 2006, before the Kindle, followed in second place with a share of around 35%. 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 Sony, Barnes and Noble, Bookeen, Plastic Logic and iRex did their best to get their share of the new and fast developing electronic book market, but the Kindles dominance looked to be pretty much unassailable. It wasnt 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 launch of the iPad, e-reader prices have fallen quite some way. The Kindle 2.0 is currently on sale for just $ 189, a significant reduction over the February 2009 launch price of $ 359. 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. Barnes and Noble have also dropped the price of their Nook reader 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 for a lower price on any other platform. This was seen as good news by the publishers, who had been unhappy with Amazons policy of selling all e-books for $ 9.99 or less.

Amazon may have had to abandon their e-book pricing policy - but it's hardly a disaster for them, or for Barnes and Noble. Amazon has always appeared to be more interested in selling books and e-books rather than hardware. That's the only feasible explanation as to why they have bent over backwards in order to make it possible to read Kindle books on such a wide selection of different devices. At the moment, you can read Kindle books on the PC, the Mac, your Blackberry, the iPod Touch, the iPad and any mobile device running Android. So companies like Barnes and Noble, Amazon and now Apple, who have a stake in the future sale of e-books over the life of a reader, can afford to sell the hardware cheaper and profit over the life of the device.

Companies who sell both books and hardware may enjoy a significant advantage over straight hardware manufacturers in future. Considering the wide variety of devices which can be used to read Kindle books, you would suspect that, regardless of whether or not the Apple iPad becomes the most popular reader, Amazon will continue to have a huge influence in the future of digital publishing going forward.

by: Hamish Hayward

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