Project: Green Living

E-book readers have been available for quite some time now. The first one, generally considered to have been the Franklin eBookman, launched in 1999, more than ten years ago. Other readers subsequently hit the market, notably Amazon’s original Kindle in November 2007 which actually lagged behind the Sony’s PRS which was released in 2006.

However, it wasn’t until 2009 that e-book readers really took off in a big way. With absolutely no disrespect to Sony, much of the credit for this must surely go to Amazon. The Kindle 2.0 launch in February 2009 backed up by the release of the larger DX reader in June caused generated a lot of publicity and made e-book readers the year’s “must have” gadget. The Kindle rapidly established itself as Amazon’s top selling product and over the course of the 2009 festive season became the most gifted Amazon product ever. Both Sony and Barnes and Noble had released new readers of their own in time for the Christmas season, but uncertainty about delivery in time for Xmas, coupled with the already established dominance of the Kindle reader meant that Amazon topped the sales charts.

At the moment there is a good selection of readers to choose from. The list of companies who have their own readers either in development or already available is both long and impressive. For the first time ever, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas in January 2010, had a separate section dedicated to e-book readers. Most industry analysts are predicting that 2010 is going to be an even more successful year for e-book readers and we can probably anticipate continuing growth in the rate of sales.

In effect, the e-book reader sector is a completely new market sector which didn’t exist, at least not in any meaningful way, until very recently. Over and above the manufacturers of the e-book reader devices themselves, there are implications for publishers, educational institutions, third party manufacturers and of course, the reading public.

The sudden development of this market segment has been excellent news for companies such as M-Edge who manufacture a wide range of Kindle accessories including reading lights, covers, chargers and so on. There are many other accessory providers who are also benefiting. Right now, there is a strong focus on accessories for the Kindle reader, but as the market grows and other readers gain in popularity these will also afford excellent opportunities to the independents.

The market for e-book readers is still nascent. It is growing and developing at an astonishing rate. Amazon was instrumental in the market’s development thus far and enjoys a 60% share of the U.S. market as a consequence of this. In 2010, their dominant position is going to be challenged, as will Sony’s current second place (with a very healthy 35% market share). However, this new market offers plenty of opportunity for companies with the vision and innovative skills to establish themselves at this early stage.

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