Amazon.com's Kindle: Publishing Industry's iPod?
Details
Themes: Strategy
Pub Date : 2009
Countries : US
Industry : Services
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Case Code : INA0111
Case Length : 25 Pages
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Amazon's Product Extension: From e-tailing to e-reading cont..
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Over a period of time, it planned to foray into manufacturing. For the first time in 2007, challenging the existence of the traditional publishing industry, it launched an e-book reader - Kindle - a home product of Amazon. Amazon thus extended its profile from e-tailing to e-reading. With its latest initiatives, Amazon proved that it wants to transform its potential capacity into profit centres by strengthening its overall business to generate disruptive blockbusters. Kindle - Amazon&'s e-ReaderKindle is an e-book reader into which people can download and read books, newspapers and magazines. The product was well received on its launch and the initial consignment was sold out in just 5 hours . However, the drawbacks in the initial model of Kindle soon surfaced as customers criticised Kindle for its hardware design, disapproving its large size and uncomfortable placement of buttons on the device. |
Also, the device did not have a back light that would enable the
reader to read even in poor lighting conditions. Based on the customer feedback, the company
started working on the drawbacks of the product. To rectify its flaws, it took 6 months for Amazon
to come up with its second consignment.
Within a span of 2 years, in February 2009, Amazon unveiled the second version of Kindle - Kindle 2.
It appealed to the consumers largely because of the added advantages and its user-friendly features,
an improvised version over its predecessor in terms of display, battery life and operation, but retained
the price as the earlier version at $359. Kindle 2 is comparatively bigger in size and much sleeker
than the earlier model and hence user-friendly.20 The product has advance features such as 'text to
speech feature' which enables the readers to listen to text displayed on screen. Amazon continued
with its improvisation of Kindle 2 and aimed at better features for its customers.
In May 2009, to increase its target customer base, Amazon released Kindle DX by including
additional features to Kindle 2 . Unlike the previous versions, Kindle DX came with a
screen that is two and a half times bigger than its predecessors . Kindle DX also has an
in-built Adobe Reader Mobile PDF capability which enables reading of business memos and other
documents. This version of Kindle enables readers to download personal and professional documents,
newspapers, magazines and textbooks.
20]MacMillan Douglas, "Meet the New Kindle", http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/02/meet_the_new_ki.html, February 2009