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Amazon's new Kindle ratchets up ereader price battle

Amazon.com's announcement that it will launch a new version of its Kindle ebook reader in late August could further stoke a price battle between major players.

By Martyn Williams / Friday, July 30 2010

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The only other ereader to be officially launched in New Zealand to date is the Kobo from Whitcoulls booksellers. The Kobo retails for $295 had is integrated with an online Whitcoullls book store.

The lower price also increases the gap between ereaders and a slew of tablet PCs that are now coming to market. Led by Apple's iPad and including several promised machines based on Google's Android OS, the tablets offer many more functions than ereaders but are heavier, have much shorter battery life and are typically more difficult to read for long periods of time.

Amazon.com is banking on the lower price translating into more sales, and there is evidence that could already be happening.

The Kindle had already become the best-selling item on Amazon.com for two years running and last week the company said it had "reached a tipping point with the new price of Kindle."

"We're seeing very, very strong [Kindle] device growth and we're seeing very, very strong content growth," Thomas Szkutak, Amazon.com's chief financial officer, told investors during a conference call.

On Wednesday Amazon said it had sold out of the US$189 model.

But the company has to date been cagey on just how well the Kindle has been selling and hasn't released detailed sales figures.