Amazon’s Kindle – best selling technology product EVER?

Amazon’s Kindle seems to have been on everyone’s Christmas list, judging by the glee emanating from the online retail giant.  Amazon.com, whilst keeping sales figures under wraps, claims that the new Kindle, the third generation of its e-reader, is the bestselling product it has ever sold in the fifteen years it has been open for business, overshadowing even its previous bestseller, none other than “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.

Such good seasonal cheer seems to have come despite the Kindle facing increasing competition from everyone’s favourite tablet, the iPad.  In fact, Amazon believes that “many” people, though it won’t give an indication of what “many” means in this context, are buying both an iPad and a Kindle.  There are reasons for thinking  why this might be the case: the Kindle offers much greater battery life (up to a month) over the power-hungry iPad, is much cheaper, and its E-Ink digital paper display means it can be read even in direct sunlight and doesn’t cause eye-strain, unlike the LCD display used on conventional tablets – which includes even the iPad.

The e-reader market is currently dominated by Amazon’s Kindle, with other e-readers falling way behind.  But the total picture is confusing: research by ChangeWave, on a sample of nearly 3000 consumers, shows the iPad higher on satisfaction, compared with the Kindle, and being increasingly used as a reading device.

Despite the competition, Amazon knows that the prize is worth the fight.  Although market research by Forrester shows that only 7% of online adults reads e-books, it seems that 7% is very active in its e-reading.  Moreover, e-readers are being actively used – people with e-readers do more than half of their reading digitally.  All this leads to a prediction that the e-book market in 2010 will amount to nearly a billion dollars, and by 2015, will have tripled to nearly $3 billion.