Amazon Are Rumoured To Be Developing New Personal Tech Gadgets
Amazon is enjoying great success with its latest third generation Kindle reader right now. An upgrade – which includes a higher contrast screen, smaller and lighter casing, faster page turns and twice as much memory – accompanied by a price drop and the introduction of a new Wi-Fi only entry level model, has seen demand for the Kindle reader rocket.
Currently, the new upgraded Kindles are out of stock and prospective customers face a three to four week wait before any new ones begin shipping. Kindle books are also outselling traditional hardback editions on a regular basis. It seems to be just a matter of time before e-book sales will higher than even paperback sales.
Amazon has also launched a dedicated UK Kindle store so that UK customers don’t require to have their readers shipped across the Atlantic and can pay for their Kindle purchases in sterling rather than dollars. It seems probable that further “local” Kindle stores will be opened for other Amazon international websites such as Germany, France etc. in the near future.
Currently, everything in the garden is rosy for Amazon. Suggestions that the launch of the Apple iPad would spell the death of the Kindle seem to be, for the moment at least, unfounded. Amazon’s policy of releasing free “apps” to allow Kindle books to be read on a variety of different devices looks to be paying dividends. So, considering what a massive success they have enjoyed with their first manufactured product, it’s hardly surprising that Amazon is rumored to be considering developing prototypes for personal tech gadgets other than the Kindle in their Lab 126 research facility.
Although Amazon has been tight-lipped on the subject, it’s thought that they may be thinking about music/movie players and possibly some kind of mobile phone. However, industry watchers suggest that, if Amazon wanted to enter the market with another gadget, then they would need to ensure that they add value rather than simply releasing another piece of personal electronic tech onto the market.
A great deal of the success of the Kindle reader must be attributed to Amazon’s strong link with books and reading in general. The massive choice of Kindle books available – over 630,000 and growing every day – and the fact that these can be read on so many other devices has been a real feather in Amazon’s cap. Any new gadget that Amazon decided to release would certainly need some similar type of support in order to achieve anything approaching the level of the Kindle’s success.