This Sunday makes Amazon’s first foray into the retail market with their Kindles going on sale nationwide at Target stores everywhere.
This will gives customers a shopping feature that they never had in the past, such as actually trying out the device before you buy it. It will also allow customers to buy the device and take it home the same day instead of waiting on shipping from the Amazon website. It seems as though Amazon is only selling the Kindle 2 at target for $259.00 and not its larger screen brother the Kindle DX. No Incentives such as price discounts or anything have been announced, and is not likely to be.
Amazon may be late to the race somewhat as their main competitor Sony corporation went the in-store route such as Bestbuy, Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and Sony Style Stores and has been sold at Target since 2008. Also Barnes and Noble launched the nook around march of this year. Meanwhile the budget e-reader Kobo went on sale in Boarders Bookstores earlier this month.
On April 18 Barnes and Noble launched their Nook at Best Buy locations across the US, although there has been reports that mainly urban centres got the initial shipments and many locations still do not have the e-reader in stock yet. Barnes and Noble recently announced 2 new e-readers last week, the Nook Lite, and the Nook 2, which fills the void of the entry range and high end range of devices.
It will be interesting to see how Amazon does in a retail setting, and how e-readers do in the physical marketplace with the dramatic increase of competition. In the last few weeks many new e-readers have hit the market, and will continue to do so until the middle of this year.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
