Marine Electronics

Amazon seemed to have found the perfect product in their Kindle reader. It was by far the market leader in the e-book reader arena, commanding a 60% share of all sales, and there was no real competition to speak of. Despite the launch of competing e-book readers by other manufacturers such as Bookeen, Barnes and Noble and Sony, there was no genuine competition and the Kindle's top position seemed to be unassailable.

Then the Apple iPad came along and, although it is an entirely different device, it did look set to spoil the party somewhat. The iPad is not without some fairly major flaws of its own, and whilst most Apple devices seem to provoke a "love them or loathe them" response, the numbers of people who would buy almost anything with the Apple logo on it are certainly large enough to make a major dent in the sales of the Kindle.

As well as releasing new, sexy hardware, Apple also struck a deal with many of the major publishers which let them charge whatever they wanted for e-books - as long as they weren't offered for less on any other device - the Kindle in other words. This looked set to put a bit of a spanner in the works of Amazon's policy of providing e-books for $ 9.99 or less. It certainly seems as if the price of e-books has been creeping upwards since the launch of the iPad. It does seem a little strange that increased competition should drive prices upwards - but there you have it.

The price of the e-book readers themselves has fallen however. Barnes and Noble cut the price of their Nook reader to $ 199. Amazon's Kindle 2.0 is now selling for just $ 189 - a huge reduction over the $ 359 launch price of February 2009. The Kindle DX can now be yours for just $ 379, a saving of $ 110 over the previous $ 489 ticket price.

So the top of the range, and freshly updated, DX reader is now over $ 100 cheaper than the entry level Apple iPad - and unlike the iPad it requires no monthly internet connection fee. The iPad is, of course, considerably more than an e-book reader - and many customers will be quite happy to pay more for a more powerful device which can be used for a variety of different applications - even if it does have a considerably shorter battery life.

Time will tell whether or not this downward price trend for e-book readers is no more than a knee-jerk reaction to the appearance of the iPad or whether it is the beginning of a new pricing policy. It may be that companies such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon could use the upward trend in e-book prices to offset lower hardware ticket prices and make their profit on the sale of e-books over the lifetime of the device. In Amazon's case, it may be no more than a holding tactic until the next generation Kindle, complete with color screen, hits the market later this year.

Find out more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

Amazon, using their Kindle reader family as a vehicle, has been a major player in the development of both the e-book reader and e-book market. The first Kindle was released in November of 2007. In February of 2009, the updated and enhanced Kindle 2.0 hit the market, quickly followed by the large format Kindle DX in the summer of the same year.

The Kindle readers dominated the market with a 60% share of all American e-book reader sales. Sony's PRS reader - which was actually available in 2006, some time before the Kindle - followed in second place with a 35% market share. Other companies quickly saw the huge potential of the rapidly developing e-book reader market and either launched or updated their own readers in order to get a share of the available sales.

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 e-book market, but the Kindle's dominance looked to be pretty much unassailable. It wasn't 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.

Differences in the devices and their intended applications notwithstanding, e-book reader prices have tumbled since the launch of the iPad. You can now pick up the Kindle 2.0 for just $ 189 - a huge reduction over the launch price of $ 359 - and a significant drop from the pre-iPad price of $ 259. The newly upgraded Kindle DX can be yours for just $ 379, down from $ 489. Barnes and Noble's Nook reader is now on sale at just $ 199.

Although the iPad seems to have provoked a round of price cuts among the manufacturers of e-books, 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 cheaper on any other platform. This was seen as good news by the publishers, who had been unhappy with Amazon's policy of selling all e-books for $ 9.99 or less.

Amazon may have had to abandon their low e-book price policy - but that wasn't necessarily a disaster for them. Considering the way that Amazon have made it possible to read Kindle books on such a wide variety of different devices - you can use the PC, the Mac, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the iPad, your Blackberry and any device which runs Android to read Kindle books right now (and no doubt there will be further additions in future) - it must be obvious that Amazon are more interested in book sales than hardware sales. The latest downward price movement for e-book readers and simultaneous price increase for e-books means that they can now sell the hardware for less and make their profit by selling e-books over the life of the hardware. The same will apply for Barnes and Noble and Apple themselves of course.

This trend may tend to favor companies which have a foot in both the book and hardware sales camps. Considering the current number of devices which can be used to read Kindle books, it looks as if Amazon will be a major player in the future of digital publishing for some time to come.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise and protect your reader.