The Amazon Kindle price is getting lower and lower as they are attempting to compete with the release of addition eReaders on the market. So with the value heading lower is the Amazon Kindle a must buy?

Well, for starters, it is possible to carry lots of of books whenever you go and the heaviest the kindle should previously get is 8.7oz that is a wee over half a pound (depending on the model you possess)! Really light and easy to hold it’s thin and fits in the palm of your hand. It’s no wonder folks are now at the point of determining to buy a kindle!Imagine sitting outside in the sun relaxing and you just want to pass the time by having your preferred book handy to examine. With the Amazon Kindle it makes it so uncomplicated as one can carry the digital version of your book in its entirety wherever you go.
Having owned the Amazon Kindle (newest generation) I can say that it’s sleek and basic with a structure which is intuitive and easy to use. So far I have downloaded about 60 books wirelessly and every book requires regarding 1 minute to download. Can you imagine hauling all individuals books around?

There’s absolutely no way to carry hundreds of paperback books but with that extraordinary e-reader it is easy to do just which. Kindle books are discounted as well apart from their paperback or hardback versions of a similar book. I take it with me and take it out whenever I possess time to kill waiting around in line, at the train station, bus stop, at the airport or just seated at a nearby cafe making the most of my cafe latte it’s actually handy getting this device.
The display screen is easy on the eyes with no glare also in the sun! Yes, you read that right. Even though the iphone, ipod touch or iPad display screen has glare when brought outdoors the Amazon Kindle displays superbly in the sun and you’ll have fun reading it whenever you go. That is not to say which there’s no place for Apple products (I own the iphone 3GS) but avid readers can appreciate the Amazon Kindle.

So is the Amazon Kindle a have to buy? For avid readers who appreciate purchasing and reading books all the time it certain is! But exactly where are you going to find the best Kindle price? Why online of course but with the Apple iPad competing in the same market for electronic books you are sure to see another Kindle price drop arriving soon.

A key factor in the massive success of Amazon’s Kindle reader has undoubtedly been the enormous number of Kindle books available for users to choose from. At the moment, there are over 725,000 Kindle books for Kindle owners to choose from. There are also 1.8 million books which are now out of copyright and can be downloaded to the Kindle for free.

Apart from making plenty of reading material available for Kindle users, Amazon has also gone out of its way to make it easy to read Kindle books even if they don’t have a Kindle reader. This has been achieved by releasing a number of free Kindle apps which permit Kindle books to be read on a range of different devices.

At the moment, free Kindle apps exist for the Windows PC, the Apple Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Blackberry smart phone and any device which runs Android. At first glance, it almost appears as if Amazon is setting up in competition to itself, but the truth of the matter is that each of these apps acts as a retail outlet for Kindle books.

Amazon has announced that Kindle owners will be able to lend each other Kindle books in the near future. Amazon has not confirmed the exact date – but it should start prior to the year end.

Users will be able to lend books that they’ve purchased to family and friends for a fourteen day period. The “borrower” can read the book using their Kindle – exactly as if they had bought it themselves. Whilst the book is on loan, the original purchaser will be unable to access it. Just like a real book in fact.

Not all books will be lendable. The ultimate decision as to whether or not books may be loaned rests with the publishers. It will be interesting to see if the publishing houses react differently to this.

Amazon has also advised that all of the devices for which free Kindle apps exist, will soon have support for newspapers and magazines as well as Kindle books. First to be activated will be the Apple devices, followed by desktop applications and Android devices (of which ever more are being made available).

Over the last year and a half or so, the ebook reader and ebook market has really taken off. The ebook market is still developing – but the public seems to have accepted ebooks already. Amazon’s latest development brings ebooks ever closer to the full functionality of traditional, printed books. You can now do just about everything with an e-book that you can with a conventional book – apart from dog-earing the pages that is. It’s another significant step forward for ebooks and ebook readers and will help them to become even more widely accepted by the reading public.

It’s been roughly three years since Amazon launched the first Kindle reader. Despite the massive influence of the Kindle, it’s worth remembering that it wasn’t the first ebook reader on the market. However, ebooks are now becoming accepted by the public – mainly due to the influence of the Kindle. It’s debatable whether or not ebooks will replace “real” books in future – but they certainly appear to be here to stay.

However, many people are getting themselves an ebook reader. The recent round of price cuts by Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Sony means that ebook readers have now become a much more affordable option for many consumers. Whilst the Kindle is the clear market leader, it’s far from the only option available. So what are the key points to look out for if you’re thinking about getting your first ebook reader?

The quality of the display is one of the most critical factors to bear in mind. E-ink technology displays are used in the majority of ebook readers. This gives a reading experience that is surprisingly similar to reading text printed on paper. It’s a lot easier on your eyes than a back-lit computer screen. It is also easy to read in direct sunlight or even glare from fluorescent lighting. A further advantage of e-ink technology displays is that they use power only when “turning the page” – so battery life is extended.

Choosing the largest display available sounds like a good idea. Obviously readers with larger screens cost more than those with smaller displays. They are also physically larger of course – and they weigh more. This will have implications on the portability of the device. If you intend to read mainly at home, then that may not be something that concerns you greatly. However, a physically larger reader will be more awkward to use with one hand – something which a lot of users like to do.

The facility to browse and download books from practically anywhere in under a minute was a significant factor in the success of the Kindle reader. However, Amazon and Barnes and Noble have now released Wi-Fi only versions of their readers. These cost a little less than the 3G readers and could be a good option for anyone who doesn’t foresee the need to download books without using a computer or connecting via a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Clearly there’s no point in having an ebook reader if there isn’t a good selection of books to read on it. For the moment at least, no industry standard format for ebooks exists. The ePub format is used by Google – but Kindle books come in a format which is unique to the Kindle. However, Amazon has released a number of free apps that lets users read Kindle books on a wide variety of different devices – without the need for a Kindle reader.

The cost of ebooks can vary widely across different readers. In fact, if you choose the right reader, the money you save on ebooks could cover the cost of your reader in just a few months – depending upon how many books you read. It’s well worth checking before you decide on which reader to buy.

There must have been a lot of discussion within Amazon as to exactly where to pitch the price of the Kindle e-book reader when it was first launched way back in November of 2007. Whilst the Kindle was far from the first reader on the market, the market was still emerging and developing and there were no clear price benchmarks. They could also have chosen from a number of different pricing plans which may have worked.

They might have decided to go for a cell phone type of plan with the price of the hardware being heavily subsidised by regular monthly payments over a fixed contract length. Some kind of halfway house with a charge to download books or access the net might also have been a possibility. In the end, Amazon chose to charge the full price for the Kindle reader and to have no monthly fee – 3G connectivity was included in the $ 359 sales price. Nor was there any fee for downloading Kindle books, it was pretty much an all inclusive package.

Whilst the Kindle was well received – Oprah Winfrey told the world that it was her “new favourite gadget” – it didn’t really change the world. It was widely thought of as a work in progress – which is precisely what it was at that time. It was only with the release of the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 that the e-book market really exploded. The Kindle 2.0 was also priced at $ 359 and the large format Kindle DX model was launched in the summer of 2009 priced at $ 489.

The e-book reader market took off and, for a while, it seemed as if every electronic manufacturer either had, or was developing, their own e-book reader. Companies like Sony, Barnes and Noble, Asus, Plastic Logic and a host of others jostled for position and fought for a share of the emerging market. The Kindle had a reported 60% share of the e-book reader market and was the standard to which other e-book reader manufacturers needed to aspire. Any reader which displayed the slightest potential was immediately dubbed the “Kindle killer” – but the truth was that the Kindle had no genuine competition.

Things changed with the release of Apple’s iPad and, not for the first time, industry watchers forecast the demise of the Kindle. However, and also not for the first time, rumours of the Kindle’s impending demise proved to be premature. The third generation Kindle was released in August of 2010 and sold like hot cakes. Shortly after the Kindle 3 launched Amazon were sold out of the new readers and prospective customers were faced with a four or five week wait before their new readers would ship.

In addition to all the usual good upgrades to the technical spec – more memory, faster page turns, smaller and lighter body, higher contrast screen etc. – Amazon unveiled a new entry level Wi-Fi only Kindle with a price of only $ 139. The Wi-Fi plus 3G model retailed for $ 189, a significant price reduction over the original $ 359 price. More importantly perhaps, the new Kindles are considerably cheaper than even the entry level iPad – and there’s no monthly connection fee to pay.

On the face of it, it looks as if the iPad and the Kindle are able to co-exist. Whether the same can be said for other e-book readers must be highly debatable. The big advantage that Amazon enjoys over some other e-book reader manufacturers is the fact that, being a book seller, it will be able to profit from the ongoing sale of e-books. If it wished, it could choose to support the cost of the hardware from e-book sales.

The e-book market is changing rapidly. It seems clear that hardware prices have further to fall, quite possibly in the not too distant future. Could we conceivably see Amazon, and maybe Barnes and Noble, making e-book readers available for free in an attempt to lock in future e-book sales? Is it beyond the realms of possibility that customers who sign up for Amazon’s Prime membership (premium delivery service) or take out an Amazon credit card could find themselves in receipt of a free, or heavily discounted, Kindle reader in the fairly near future? Only time will tell.

At the end of July, the newly enhanced third generation Kindle e-book reader was unveiled by Amazon. It’s been flying off the shelves ever since and Amazon has, yet again, run out of stocks in the immediate post launch period. It hardly matches the post iPad launch predictions which anticipated the demise of the Kindle.

It’s clear that the iPad fairly trounces the Kindle in many areas. Colour touch screen, superior web browsing, ability to play video, a huge choice of games and other apps – these are just a few items on what is a very long list. Which is not all that surprising when you consider that the price of even the entry level iPad is more than three times that of the Kindle base model.

However, the Kindle beats the iPad in the areas that really matter for anyone whose primary intention is to read books – especially whilst out and about. The Kindle’s e-ink technology display means that it can last for up to four weeks between charges. Whilst the iPad’s colour screen may be a thing of beauty, it is power hungry and you’ll be lucky to last for more than ten hours between charges. The Kindle is smaller and lighter than the iPad and, as Amazon has pointed out in recent television adverts, it has a screen which is much more readable – even in bright sunlight. As already mentioned, the entry level Kindle price of $ 139 is well below the base iPad price of $489 – and with no monthly fees to pay either.

However, that does not come close to describing all of the advantages which the Kindle enjoyed. Whilst it may be quite natural, focussing too strongly on the e-book reader hardware may be a mistake. You could argue that Sony’s PRS reader, which was released in 2006, was somewhat better than the original Amazon Kindle which launched in November of 2007. However, the Kindle quickly claimed the market leader’s position largely because it was much easier to buy and download Kindle books for it than it was to get books for the Sony’s PRS reader. Amazon had a huge selection of Kindle books on their website for customers to choose from – and it was very easy to buy and download these.

As the market develops and matures, e-book sales will assume a greater importance than the sale of e-book reader hardware. Amazon is ideally placed to take full advantage of ongoing e-book sales. They could even use these to subsidise the cost of their reader hardware if they wished.

Amazon has given a big hint as to how they expect the market to develop in the future by launching a number of free apps which allow Kindle books to be read on a wide selection of different devices – including the PC, the Blackberry smart phone, the Mac computer, any device which runs the Android operating system and even the iPhone and the iPad. Whilst this may seem like they are pulling the rug from under their own top selling product, each of these apps is effectively an additional retail outlet for Kindle books – where the big money will be made in future.

It’s a strategy which certainly seems to be working well. Today, Kindle books account for something between 60 and 80 percent of the American e-book market. As the market matures, Amazon’s share seems likely to reduce a little – but it looks like they will continue to be one of the major players in this market for quite some time to come.

The Amazon Kindle reader has been a huge success for Amazon since it was originally introduced in November of 2007. The upgrade Kindle 2.0, released in February 2009 was a huge influence in the rapid growth and development of the e-book reader market and the new Kindle 3 reader, unveiled at the end of July 2010, has been selling faster than ever.

According to Amazon, the new Kindle 3 has been selling faster than any previous Kindle did during the equivalent post launch period. It’s a long way removed from the widely forecast demise of the Kindle that a lot of industry analysts anticipated in the wake of the Apple iPad’s launch.

It’s a compliment to the Kindle – albeit a backhanded one – that, until now, its only realistic competition has come in the form of a multi-functional tablet computer which costs over three times the price of the Kindle. It seems reasonable to assume that were Amazon to treble the Kindle price, that some additional features could possibly be added.

However, that seems to be an unlikely course of events. The Kindle is a specialist, intended to be the best e-book reader available on the market. The iPad is specifically designed to be a multi-functional device. They are two entirely different devices which are aimed at different market sectors. A blow by blow technical comparison is unlikely to produce anything meaningful.

Notwithstanding that, it’s interesting to note that Kindle games are starting to appear on the market. Obviously the iPad is the clear winner when it comes to playing games – the Kindle’s screen, whilst ideal as an e-book reader, is not suitable for anything which requires a fast refresh rate.

So it should be no surprise that the types of games being released for the Kindle are mainly word puzzles and number games. Currently, the most popular Kindle game is the timeless classic Scrabble. Other options include Sudoku, crosswords and general word puzzles. Just to be clear, we’re not talking about Halo or Grand Theft Auto here – but, without wanting stereotyping too much, it probably makes sense that someone who reads a lot might also enjoy solving word puzzles and maybe playing Sudoku.

Scrabble for the Kindle is currently available for $ 4.99 and is the best selling Kindle game at this time. Most games available seem to range from $ 0.99 to $ 4.99. We can even see some free games appearing, a trend which – if Kindle games develop along the same lines as Kindle books – will in all probability increase in the near future.

Amazon have played a major part in the development of the e-book market and have been a key influence in the recent surge in the popularity of both e-books and e-book readers. Amazon’s Kindle reader first appeared on the market during November of 2006 and subsequent updates followed with the release of the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 and the August 2010 launch of the upgraded third generation Kindle. The large display Kindle DX was released in the summer of 2009 and also had an upgrade in August 2010.

Many business analysts forecast that, regardless of Amazon’s influential role in the development of the e-book and e-book reader market, the release of Apple’s iPad would effectively kill off the Kindle. However, following the release of the latest third generation Kindle, accompanied by a price cut, Amazon is, once again, out of stock of Kindles. It looks as if demand remains high for what is now Amazon’s best selling product.

E-books have been readily accepted by many readers. Others seem to love physical books as much as they love reading. However, for many people the ability to carry large quantities of books around with them, coupled with the ease of operation offered by e-book readers, has been an attractive proposition. Recent e-book reader price cuts, prompted or at least hastened by the launch of the iPad, have made e-book readers more attractive to many consumers.

Amazon recently announced that they are currently selling more Kindle books than traditional hard cover editions. The low selling priced of e-books – they use no paper or ink and have no delivery fees to speak of after all – certainly help. It can only be a matter of time before e-books start to sell more than paperbacks.

The ease with which e-books can be bought, and subsequently delivered, is another influencing factor. Readers can download a book to their Kindle in less than sixty seconds, at any time of the day or night, just as long as they can connect to Amazon’s Kindle store.

One possible stumbling block for many readers was a reticence to be “tied” to any particular e-book reader. Amazon seem to have overcome this rather nicely by releasing an absolute plethora of free “apps” which allows Kindle books to be read on a variety of different devices. At the moment, Kindle books can be read on the PC, the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad, the Blackberry smart phone and any device which runs the Android operating system. It’s a clever move on Amazon’s part. It not only removes customer’s concerns about being tied to one proprietary piece of hardware but every new app acts as a seperate point of sale for Amazon’s vast library of Kindle books. Current figures suggest that around about 20% of all Kindle book sales are read on non-Kindle hardware.

All things considered, it looks like e-books are here to stay and that they will gradually account for a higher and higher percentage of book sales. It also looks as if Amazon are going to be very influential in the world of digital publishing for the foreseeable future.

Amazon recently confirmed that, in the 4 weeks following the release of their third generation Kindle, more Kindle readers were sold than during the same time period following any earlier Kindle reader launch. The new Kindle is, not simply in demand, it is the fastest selling Kindle to date. Amazon didn’t reveal precisely how many Kindles were sold, but they did confirm that, since the release of the upgraded Kindle, customers have purchased more Kindles on Amazon.com and the newly opened Kindle store at Amazon.co.uk combined than any other item.

The new Kindle 3 was announced by Amazon at the end of July. The latest version packs the same 6″ display into a new slimmed down design which is 21% smaller and 15% lighter. Page turn speed is 20% faster and memory size has been boosted from 2GB to 4GB – sufficient to store 3,500 books. With the Wi-Fi turned off, the battery will now last for a month – even with the Wi-Fi on, a 10 day life is achievable – and the e-ink technology screen has had its contrast improved.

A new entry level Wi-Fi only Kindle was introduced for customers who don’t feel the need for 3G. This sells for $ 139, with the 3G plus Wi-Fi model selling for $ 189. Those prices are very much lower than the earlier Kindle price tag $ 359. It’s a clear indication that the e-book reader market is maturing.

During the first six months of 2010, Amazon sold 3 times as many Kindle books as they did during the same period of 2009. There are now more than 670,000 Kindle books available – not including the 1.8 million free titles available.

The Kindle remains Amazon’s number one selling product. It is also the most gifted and most wished for product on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. With the strong sales figures of the Kindle and the latest technical improvements, it would be easy to overlook the significance of the opening of the UK Kindle store at Amazon.co.uk. The UK store has opened with 400,000 titles available and could increase international Kindle sales. If it proves to be successful – and why wouldn’t it be – it seems probable that further “local” Kindle stores in France, Germany, Japan etc. – and any other country with its own independent Amazon website – might be opened.

Whilst Amazon still faces competition from the Apple iPad this doesn’t seem to concern them too much. At the moment, there is more than enough daylight between the prices of the Kindle and the iPad to make the Kindle the natural choice for anyone whose main interest is in reading books. As the e-book market matures, much more emphasis will be given to the sale of e-books as opposed to e-book readers. The fact that Kindle books are outselling iBooks by a ratio of sixty to one speaks volumes.

E-books and e-book readers have been hot gadgets for quite some time now. In 2009, the market for e-book readers rocketed and one of the most important driving factors was the release of the Amazon Kindle.0 in February of that year. Amazon followed up with the release of their Kindle DX large display model in the summer of 2009 and, in the last six months of the year, it seemed as if electronics manufacturers were getting in line to launch e-book readers of their own in order to secure a share of the new market. The fact that practically every new reader which displayed any potential was immediately christened the “Kindle Killer” should give some idea of just how influential Amazon was to the market’s development. The Kindle reader was, absolutely, the industry standard that required to be matched and then beaten.

However, there was nothing to suggest that the reader which would offer serious competition to the Kindle was anywhere in sight. It was only with the launch of Apple’s iPad – a significantly different type of device – that the Kindle’s dominance was in any way threatened. Even then, the death of the Kindle as a result of consumers turning to the iPad just doesn’t seem to have materialised. Very rapidly following the release of the newly upgraded third generation Kindle in August 2010, Amazon had sold out of the devices and prospective customers were faced with a wait of several weeks before their new readers could be shipped.

The fact that these latest upgrades were accompanied by a hefty price reduction would certainly need to be taken into account when considering the reasons behind the upsurge in the Kindle’s popularity. Amazon’s new entry level Wi-Fi only Kindle was available for only $ 139. If you remember that the Kindle 2.0 was selling for $ 359 at its February 2009 launch, that’s a very significant price reduction. It takes the Kindle – and e-book readers in general – much nearer to the sub $ 100 impulse buying price range for personal electronic devices. Whether or not the launch of the iPad prompted, or at least hastened, this is probably an academic point. Not only would the price reduction would have happened anyway, but there is still a lot of room for downward price adjustment – and probably in the not too distant future.

However, whilst Amazon and Apple may be enjoying a good deal of success, the same cannot be said for other e-book reader manufacturers. A number of planned e-book readers have either been delayed or completely cancelled. The Plastic Logic Que reader, for example, is pretty well dead in the water. Dutch company Irex, a previously well established business, has gone bankrupt after disappointing US sales of their Irex reader. The Skiff reader, from Sprint and Hearst has been cancelled.

Could we be heading towards a strongly polarised market in which Amazon dominate the low cost “pure” e-book reader sector and Apple clean up in the pricier tablet computer that also serves as an e-book reader market? The price difference between the Kindle and the iPad is fairly big. Is there room between the two devices, in terms of both price and specification levels, for other players to enter the market?

Recently Amazon confirmed that sales figures for Kindle books are outstripping the sales of hardback editions. It doesn’t seem to outrageous to suggest that e-book sales may very well catch up with paperback sales – quite possibly in the fairly near future. It seems that e-books could well be the future of reading, but just what kind of device will you choose to read them on?

There are many reviews of e-book readers on the Internet at the moment. You can often find them in magazines and newspapers as well. This is a result of the fact that e-book readers really took off last year – due, in large measure, to the release of Amazon’s Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009. Right now there is a very wide selection of e-book readers to choose from and many people need help and advice in order to choose the correct reader for them.

Many reviews focus very strongly on the hardware – the Sony Daily Edition screen is this size, the Kindle DX screen is that size, this reader has wireless, this reader has touch screen controls etc. Which is all well and good, but if you’re buying your first e-book reader then in all probability you will be making a mental comparison not between different e-book readers but between e-book readers and “real” books.

Just case you are having doubts about buying an e-book reader, you might be interested to know that a recent survey found that 80% of US e-book reader owners prefer their electronic device to a traditional paper book electronic device. Based on that type of feedback, it doesn’t look as if those who have changed from paper to electronic books and missing the experience of a real book. It appears that manhandling hefty, bound editions is no longer an attractive prospect for those who have experience of using e-book readers.

The quality of the display is very definitely one of the key things that you should consider when choosing your e-book reader. Assuming that the main purpose of your e-book reader is to read books rather than surf the web or watch video, you will definitely want to get a reader with an e-ink technology display. These are much closer to reading printed text on paper than reading using a backlit computer screen. They also consume much less power, which allows you to go for weeks between charges. The screen will, very briefly, flicker and go black as you turn the page. This is not a big problem, you will notice it at first but, after a couple of reading sessions, you will be unaware of it.

Another important factor which you should take into consideration is the layout of the controls and the overall usability. The controls of the Amazon Kindle for example, are well laid out and easy to use. It’s very easy to use the Kindle with only one hand, this makes it ideal if you are on a crowded bus or train. The Sony reader features touch screen controls – but this results in a slightly poorer display as touch screen technology today is not completely transparent and also requires the use of a slightly more reflective screen.

Finally, do not make the mistake of assuming that e-book prices are the same for different readers. A recent survey, conducted by the New York Times, found considerable differences in the price of books across different e-book reader platforms. The difference in some cases was so large that choosing the right reader could save you enough money to pay for the reader itself within twelve months and you would still have a few dollars left over to buy books! Obviously book pricing is volatile – so be sure to check on the average price of e-books for the reader that you are thinking of buying.