Amazon.com’s Kindle e-reader will debut in all Target stores June 6,
creating a new bricks-and-mortar sales channel for the device. According to a
June 2 Reuters report, the Kindle will retail for $259.
The broader rollout implies that Target’s more limited Kindle offering,
which started in late April, proved a success. For Amazon, having a retail
outlet to complement its online offerings could allow it to compete more
heartily against not only Barnes & Noble’s Nook, but also the Apple
iPad.
Despite being dismissed as a niche product by analysts in 2009, e-readers
evolved into a bestseller by that year’s holiday season, with the Kindle
squaring off against the Nook for shoppers’ recession-squeezed dollars.
Following that success, a number of smaller manufacturers unveiled their own
e-readers at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, but none seems
to have acquired the same degree of traction in the market as the Kindle, which
benefits from Amazon’s multimillion-dollar marketing muscle.
That was before Apple revealed the iPad, which sold 2 million units in the
two months following its April 3 rollout. During a May 25 shareholders’
meeting, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos suggested
that the Kindle’s strategy for battling the iPad would be to emphasize the
e-reader experience.
“The Kindle will compete with these LCD devices like the iPad by being a
very focused product,” Bezos told his audience, according
to The Wall Street Journal. “Serious readers are going to want a
purpose-built device because it’s an important activity for them.”
But Amazon has also chosen to focus on promoting Kindle software for other
devices, including PCs and Android-based smartphones. Recent updates to its
free Kindle for PC application include a full-screen reading mode and the
ability to edit notes and marks, change background color, and adjust screen
brightness. Kindle software leverages Amazon’s Whispersync technology to
synchronize notes, bookmarks, and last page read between a user’s PC,
smartphone and Kindle device.
For its part, Barnes & Noble announced a retail-channel deal in April
with Best Buy to not only sell the device, but
port the bookseller’s own e-reader software onto the retailer’s PCs and
smartphones. Barnes & Noble’s most recent software update includes a
beta Web browser and Android-based games, suggesting the company’s ultimate
strategy is to diversify the device’s features as opposed to focusing tightly
on the e-reader experience.
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