Archive for the ‘Kindle Outside of USA’ Category
Kindle 3 for New Zealand; eBook Price War Heating Up in UK no comments
New Zealand is finally being included in the Kindle family with the introduction of the new Kindle 3 ereaders. The Kindle 3 can be ordered from and shipped to New Zealand. Orders placed now for the Kindle 3 will ship on Sept. 10, 2010. The 6-inch latest generation Kindle with 3G + Wi-Fi is $189 USD and the Wi-Fi only Kindle 3 is $139. The Kindle 3 for New Zealand will not come with an AC adaptor, but will include a USB cable to use for charging. There will initially be 380,000 English-language ebooks available from Amazon for Kiwis to choose from.
The ebook price war brought about by Amazon opening the UK Kindle Store continues to escalate. WH Smith has dropped the price of all of its ebooks by 50 percent and some top selling fiction titles are 66 percent off. Even so, many titles still seem to be slightly more expensive than Amazon’s. Waterstones’ ebook prices seem to be the highest of the three on the titles I checked.
Amazon launched its UK Kindle Store earlier this month with over 400,000 titles. I have not been able to find any hard numbers as to how many ebooks are offered by WH Smith, whose ebook store is powered by Overdrive. Waterstones seems to only have a little over 30,000 ebooks available.
WH Smith has also lowered its price on the Sony Pocket Edition Reader to £99 to match the £99.99 price over at Waterstones.
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Amazon Kindle Store UK Launched; Kindle 3 Now Shipping September 8 no comments
Amazon has launched its UK Kindle Store
Meanwhile, the Kindle 3 ereaders have sold out again and the shipping date has been pushed back to September 8, 2010.
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eReading is Really Big in China 1 comment
Judging by the ever-growing number of ereaders continuously being released in China, it should come as no surprise that ereading is probably more popular there than anywhere else on the planet.
The Independent reports that in 2009 the value of digital publishing surpassed that of traditional publishing in China – this according to China’s General Administration of Press and Publication.
Most of the ereading in China seems to be done on mobile phones. According to Research and Markets almost a half million dedicated ereaders have been sold there in the first half of 2010 – up from just over a quarter million in all of last year.
Will the iPad be going to China any time soon? No official word from Apple, but the iPad has just received a safety certification from the Chinese government – a necessary first step before the iPad can be released there.
And what of the Kindle? The Kindle 3 will support the Chinese language (both Simple and Traditional) along with several other new languages. There have been recent rumors that Amazon might be planning to launch the Kindle ereader in China in the near future – rumors fueled in part by a job opening posted briefly on Amazon.cn for a “Sr. Product Manager, Amazon Kindle.”
Sony announced in May that it would be releasing its ereader in China this year as well. There are an estimated 200 to 300 million book readers in China, so it could prove to be the most lucrative market for ereaders, especially as Chinese readers seem to be wholeheartedly embracing digital reading. On the other hand, rampant piracy may make it a much more challenging market for selling ebooks than the West.
I’m wondering if the Kindle Store here in the US will start carrying ebooks in the newly supported languages once the Kindle 3 is shipping? There seem to be very few Chinese or Korean Kindle books at the moment. There are more books in Japanese, but most of these seem to be Japanese public domain classics (did you know that Genji Monogatari, written in the eleventh century, is usually considered to be the world’s first novel?). There also do not yet seem to be many books that would use the Cyrillic character set offered by the Kindle 3.
Currently, the only non-English content that you can easily search
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Kindle for Mac Released no comments
Amazon has just announced the release of the promised Kindle for Mac
From Amazon’s press release:
With Kindle for Mac, readers can take advantage of the following features:
- Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
- Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free
- Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
- Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
- View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone
- Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks
Several features will be added to the Kindle for Mac app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights. Kindle for Mac is available to customers around the world as a free download.
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Kindle DX Global to Start Shipping Tomorrow no comments
Amazon is due to start shipping the Kindle DX with global Wireless
Since Amazon first announced the global wireless connection for the 6-inch Kindle ereader a little over three months ago Kindles are now available in several countries that were not included in the original Kindle Global release. These countries, which now do get Kindles, include Argentina, Canada, Chile and Thailand.
Refurbished Kindle DX ereaders with US wireless don’t seem to be available at the moment, but there are a few sellers of used Kindle DX’s with US wireless
This also seems to be true of the Kindle 2; there are no more refurbished Kindle 2 ereaders at the moment, so I am presuming that Amazon has sold out of their stock. You can buy used Kindle 2′s
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Kindle International Country Details no comments
I’ve reformatted the country specific details for the International Kindle
There is also some more news regarding the Kindle International ereader.
The Globe and Mail is reporting that Amazon is currently in negotiations with Canadian telecoms and it sounds as though there is a good chance that the Kindle ereader will be available in Canada in time for the holidays.
There may also be a Kiwi version of the Kindle International pretty soon as well. New Zealand PCWorld is reporting that Amazon is in “deep discussions” with Vodafone to bring the Kindle to New Zealand.
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A Few More Notes on Kindle International 2 comments
Just a few more quick notes on Amazon’s new Kindle International. First of all, if you want to find details of the Kindle International’s release in a particular country there is a drop down country list on the Kindle International
page. While over 100 countries will have Kindles with 3G wireless joy, there are some notable exceptions. Just doing a quick scan I found that Amazon still will not ship Kindles to Canada or Thailand or Israel among other countries. New Zealand is also left out so far, although the Kindle International is available in Australia (but doesn’t come with a power adapter). Some other countries will get Kindles but no wireless connection.
While the US Kindle store now has 350,000 titles, the Kindle stores in some other countries have less than 200,000. This is still much better than Sony’s ebook store.
There is an interesting article about the Kindle International on Wired.com. It includes portions of a telephone interview with Jeff Bezos. Some interesting points:
- The International Kindle will use AT&T instead of Sprint, which the Kindle 2 uses.
- The Lonely Planet series will be added to the Kindle store
- Customers who purchased Kindle 2 within the last 30 days may exchange it for Kindle International
- Mr. Bezos also revealed that of books currently available at Amazon in both paper and Kindle formats, 48% of sales are in Kindle version
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Kindle 2 Price Reduction and Amazon Launches Overseas no comments
The Kindle 2 is now selling for $259 in the US. A new Kindle with global wireless will be released on October 19th. The international model will sell for $279, and will provide 3G coverage in over 100 countries.
A statement on Amazon’s site states “With this new Kindle, you can get your books, newspapers, and magazines delivered wirelessly while at home or abroad in over 100 countries. Whether you’re in Paris, Mumbai, or Sao Paulo, you can think of a book and be reading it in less than 60 seconds.
Actually, it appears that the “2″ has been dropped; now there is a Kindle with US wireless coverage
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New Rumors of an Inpending Kindle Launch in the UK no comments
There have been several rumor cycles concerning an impending Kindle launch in the UK. This time it could even possibly maybe come true.
On September 30th the Bookseller quoted an “authoritative source” as saying “The key things they needed to tie up have been tied up. The rumours I’ve heard are all saying next week.” Presumably one of these key things would be the wireless connection, which is GSM/GPRS in Europe vs. CDMA which the Kindle Whispernet uses in the US.
One recent poll indicates that there is a fair amount of pent-up demand for ereaders in the UK. The same poll indicates that one major roadblock in the growth of the ereader market in the UK is a less than stellar selection of ebook titles. If the Kindle store launches with anything approaching the number of titles it has in the US version it will be very well positioned to take advantage of this demand and could make for a great holiday season for Amazon’s ereaders.
Another recent poll by the shopping site Retrevo is pointing to a good holiday season for ereaders, especially for Amazon. The poll, conducted in the United States and with a sample size of 771 people, found 21% of respondents planning to purchase an ereader this year. Of these, 62% planned to buy Amazon’s Kindle, 32% favored a Sony ereader and the remaining 6% were planning on buying another brand.
Hopefully once the Kindle is launched in the UK other European countries will follow shortly. However the wireless landscape in Europe is much more complicated than that in the US. In the US it is possible to have an agreement with just one carrier, but in Europe there are many different cellular operators that Amazon would have to have agreements with.
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It’s an Orwellian World 1 comment
This week Kindle owners were shocked to learn that certain titles by George Orwell had been disappeared from their Kindles, and their accounts refunded the amounts paid for the titles. What apparently happened is that Amazon got a hold of unauthorized additions of some of Orwell’s titles and when the mistake was discovered, Amazon’s system automatically removed the ebooks from purchaser’s Kindles via the wireless connection. It’s kind of fitting that Amazon should choose a title such as 1984 to introduce us to the dark side of the Wispernet.
Because of the outrage this incident has caused, Amazon has said that in the future it will not just automatically remove purchased books from Kindles if a similar situation arises.
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Mobile is reporting that Amazon is close to finalizing a launch date for the Kindle in the UK, presumably in time for Christmas. Agreements with book publishers have already been finalized, and negotiations with a mobile operator and with newspaper and magazine publishers are in progress, according to the article.
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FreeHand Systems, a global leader in digital sheet music publishing, has announced that its Novato Music Press catalog of over 20,000 classical, traditional and American music titles is now available for the Kindle.
“This is a wonderful boon to musicians who want instant access to a vast library of in-demand sheet music,” said Kim Lorz, CEO of FreeHand Systems, Inc. “In addition to the convenient and comprehensive content selection that we offer, musicians never have to fumble through paper scores or worry about forgetting a piece of music. Everything is wirelessly downloaded and stored in the Kindle and is available for easy recall.”
This is the first time such a comprehensive collection of sheet music has been made available on an ebook reader. FreeHand Systems’ goal is to make all of their more than 130,000 titles available for the Kindle.
