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Will Kindle 2.0 Mirror iPod's Success?

Rumor has it Amazon will unveil the second generation of its ebook Kindle at a press event next Monday. The device is expected to be thinner and cheaper, but still will lack certain functionalities the digital consuming public might expect. Beyond that, predictions for the device seem overly optimistic.

Citigroup Analyst: 500,000 Kindles Sold Last Year

The Kindle, Amazon's e-book reader, has been sold out for months.  Over 7,600 (mostly positive) reviews have been written on its official product page.  And even though Amazon's chosen not to share official figures, a Citigroup analyst has now estimated that around 500,000 Kindles were sold last year.

Hitwise: Interest In E-Books, E-Book Readers On The Rise

The market for e-books and e-book readers seems to be growing bigger and bigger.  It's not at all time to declare the death of the paperback, but new UK data from Hitwise shows that searches for certain e-book-related terms are becoming much more common.

Amazon Q4 Sales Up 18 Percent

Amazon.com has released its fourth quarter results for December 2008 beating expectations. The company's sales increased 18 percent to $6.70 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $5.67 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Amazon's Newest Foray Into Gaming

Amazon has purchased Reflexive Entertainment, a computer game developer based in Lake Forest, California, founded 11 years ago. Apart from actually developing games for PCs, Macs, and even the XBox 360, they own the popular site Reflexive Arcade, which offers downloads of PC games and Mac games, as well as online web games.

Electronic Newspaper Reader Debuts

Plastic Logic has launched a new electronic newspaper reader similar to Amazon's Kindle, but it's about the size of a regular piece of copy paper. Like the Kindle, this reader utilizes E-Ink's black and white display technology.

Amazon Looking to Rekindle its Kindle Strategy

Word on the street is that Amazon is working on some new versions of the Kindle. At least one of them will be aimed at college students, a market that probably should've been targeted more closely the first time around.

Analyst On Amazon's Kindle: "iPod Of The Book World"

Good dogs get compared to Lassie, good sports cars are put next to Corvettes, and good athletes are measured against Michael Jordan.  Now a Citigroup analyst has done Amazon the favor of comparing its Kindle to the iPod.

Amazon Kindle To Get 5,000 More Titles

Amazon.com has announced that publisher Simon & Shuster will make 5,000 more books available for the Amazon Kindle, pushing the number of books available to 130,00 on the wireless device.Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said the Kindle e-books now account for 6 percent of sales among the previous 125,000 titles available on the site in both print and electronic formats.

Amazon Reduces Price On Kindle

Amazon has reduced the price of its Kindle electronic book reader by 10 percent and it is now available to customers for $359 down from $399.