Amazon Kindle Sales Hit New Record
By Anna Johnson on August 31st, 2010Amazon’s Kindle e-reader doesn’t appear to be suffering at the hands of the iPad or any other e-reading device. Amazon received more orders for its next generation Kindle in the first four weeks following its availability than in the same period following any other Kindle release.
On top of that, in the same period, customers ordered more Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product.
Amazon’s sales record is consistent with its recent claim about selling three times as many Kindle books in the first half of 2010 as it did in the first half of 2009, with the Kindle continuing to be the number one product sold on Amazon.
The sales record is not so surprising since, by most measures, Amazon’s new Kindle is superior to its predecessor. It’s lighter, smaller, faster, has longer battery life, has double the storage, and is also cheaper.
To be specific, the new Kindle has: a 21 percent smaller and 15 percent lighter body; 20 percent faster page turns; up to one month of battery life with wireless off; double the storage to 3,500 books; built-in Wi-Fi; and is priced at just $139 ($189 for the Kindle 3G which has all the same features plus with free 3G wireless).
Meanwhile, Amazon is continuing to provide Kindle owners with plenty of content. Its U.S. Kindle store now features more than 670,000 books and the recently released U.K. Kindle store has more than 400,000 titles.
Based on all this, it seems, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos isn’t particularly worried about competition from Apple’s iPad or other e-readers.
On a recent episode of the Charlie Rose TV program Bezos said that the main differentiator between the Kindle and all the other devices is that Amazon wants the AUTHOR rather than Amazon to “create the experience.”
That makes a lot of sense. If Amazon can continue positioning and developing Kindle into a device where the technology takes a backseat to the content, that may well be the best way to compete with a ‘wow’ multifunctional device such as the iPad.
