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Amazon must be over the moon with the sales results for its Kindle reader family forin 2009. February saw the launch of the Kindle 2.0 and the DX followed hard on its heels in June. The Kindle very rapidly achieved the position of Amazon’s top selling product – even before the global launch of the Kindle 2.0 in October.

During the 2009 festive season, the Kindle became Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever and, on Christmas day 2009, more Kindle books were sold than traditional paperbacks and hardbacks combined. In all probability that would have been due to all those lucky people who had found a Kindle under the tree on Christmas morning. No doubt, after opening their gift and got the Kindle out of the box, proud new Kindle owners would wish to try out their new toy. That would probably have involved connecting to the Amazon Kindle store and grabbing a Kindle book or two.

Notwithstanding the above, selling more Kindle books than paperbacks and hardbacks is still a major achievement. Even though some will say that the manner in which this was achieved was slightly artificial then perhaps that simply emphasises Amazon’s business model.

Of course Amazon’s competition have been closely monitoring their success and taking steps to ensure that they secure a share of the new e-book reader market. The list of companies with e-book readers under development reads like a role call of consumer electronics household names. Apple, Sony, Samsung and Microsoft are just a few of the competitors who will be slugging it out with Amazon in 2010. And let’s not forget Barnes and Noble who have now released their own Nook e-book reader.

Many of the next generation readers will incorporate features which will make the Kindle, in its current format at least,appear somewhat out of date. Color displays, touch screen controls and a new industry standard e-book format which will permitusers to lend e-books to friends and family or even to borrow books from participating digital libraries are just a few of the features which users can expect in the near future.

One thing’s for sure, Amazon will not stand and watch while their competitors muscle in on the market which Amazon has been so instrumental in developing. The present iteration of the Kindles, as innovative as they were just a few short months ago, probably bear little resemblance to what e-book readers will be like in the (very) near future. Amazon will already be working on a new and enhanced Kindle (the Kindle 4?) and, considering the level of innovation and drive they have displayed so far, Amazon will be anticipating more success in 2010. Kindle users can look forward to an updated, enhanced Kindle loaded with new features – probably in the first six months of 2010. In the meantime expect Amazon to continue to increase the selection of Kindle books available on its Kindle store - so users will have the ideal combination of hardware and software.

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Tags: Amazon Kindle, electronics, mobile computing, personal tech, technology