TechCrunch is reporting this week that the Amazon promotion that popped up in January offering a “free” Kindle to their most dedicated readers was just a trial run for a much more ambitious undertaking. If you recall the offer that was extended was to buy a Kindle and if you weren’t thrilled with it you could receive a refund while retaining the Kindle. Purportedly Amazon is hoping to extend this same offer to all Amazon Prime subscribers. Amazon Prime is a $79 a year subscription which offers free 2-day shipping on all orders. While I’m sure it would be a PR win for Amazon, I just don’t see this as that critical for Amazon’s success in the e-reader world and I certainly don’t see it as tipping the scales one way or the other in their upcoming war with Apple and the rest of the tablet manufacturing world.
I am not with the camp that believes the iPad is going to be the death of the Kindle, between the E-ink screen, the persistent free internet connection, the price, the weeks of battery life and the phenomenally simple interface I think the Kindle will be safe with their niche audience for some time to come. For those that just want a device to read books, the iPad is overkill and overpriced. Amazon’s die hard fans most likely stick with the company’s device and fortunately for Amazon that die hard contingent is a pretty large number.
The new critical component for Amazon’s growth in the e-reader world is their app development for the iPad and the Android tablets that will be hot on its tail. It hasn’t been discussed much, but the iBooks app for the iPad is not pre-installed on the device and Android tablets should be similarly lacking in a default application. This leaves things wide open for Amazon to simply outdo or just match the other offerings. The iBooks app looks fairly visually impressive and I enjoy Aldiko on Android, but there is nothing out there at the moment that presents an insurmountable challenge. Throw in some nice page turning animations and work on solid annotation functionality which can be viewed across platforms and they should be in a good position to retain their place in the market.
The Kindle name is currently synonymous with ebooks and with a minimum of application design effort Amazon can make sure that a year from now that is still the case.
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