Amazon Are Tuned In To What Readers Want
By theblogger. Filed in High Speed Internet Information |
Amazon is the world’s largest bookseller. It is also America’s biggest online retailer. The company was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos and now has separate websites in the UK, Canada, France, Germany and China. It is, whatever way you look at it, an extremely successful business.
Considering its current level of success, it’s easy to forget just what an innovative idea buying books online and having them delivered by 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.
Having changed the way that many people buy books, Amazon quickly diversified into video, music, CDs, computer software and consumer electronics. Today there aren’t many consumer items that you can’t buy from Amazon. If you want, you can even do your grocery shopping on Amazon’s site.
As diversified and successful as Amazon have now become, they still have a very strong association with books. Selling books is very obviously something 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 overlook the fact that the Kindle wasn’t the first e-book reader – not by some way. Franklin’s eBookman had been released a decade earlier in 1999. Sony’s PRS reader also hit the market ahead of the Kindle when it launched in 2006. However, Amazon don’t seem to have suffered very much 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 improved and enhanced Kindle 2.0 was launched, rapidly followed by the large format DX model, and Amazon’s leading position solidified even more. The Kindle quickly became Amazon’s best selling product and, during the Christmas period of 2009, the Kindle became the “most gifted” Amazon product ever.
Today, although the Kindle is still very much the number one e-book reader on the market, competition is really hotting up. Other e-book readers with color screens are available, some have touch screen functionality. After just a few short months the Kindle, as a piece of hardware, may be becoming slightly dated. However, analysing the e-book reader market purely in terms of hardware technology is missing the point somewhat.
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 why Amazon will continue to dominate the e-book reader market 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.
