As well as being a phenomenally successful product for Amazon, the Amazon Kindle e-book reader has played a hugely important role in putting both e-books and e-book readers on the map. However, it didn’t achieve its success as a result of being the first to market. Franklin launched the eBookman reader in 1999 – more than ten years ago – and the Sony PRS reader was launched in 2006, well in advance of the original Kindle launch date of November 2007.

It was the release of the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009 that saw the market really take off. The Kindle rapidly became the top selling item on the Amazon site and, with a U.S. market share of 60%, was the clear market leader. The very fact that any new e-book reader which shows the slightest potential is immediately dubbed the “Kindle Killer” demonstrates that the Kindle is not just the market leader but the industry standard against which other e-book readers are measured.

The newest contender for The Kindle crown is Apple’s iPad – and it could very well be the strongest contender yet. Is it the future of mobile computing or is it just a bigger version of the iPod Touch? At the end of the day it doesn’t matter much – it’s going to sell well for Apple.

Amazon’s immediate response to the announcement of the iPad was to release an iPad “app” to allow Kindle books to be read on Apple’s new device. Based on that evidence, you would have to guess that Amazon aren’t overly concerned by the release of this latest, and possibly most credible to date, Kindle Killer.

In fact, considering the number of apps that Amazon have now released to allow Kindle books to be read without the use of a Kindle – there’s one for the PC, the Mac, the iPod, the Blackberry, and now the iPad – you might be forgiven for thinking that, despite the huge success of the Kindle to date, Amazon may well be a somewhat reluctant manufacturer.

Based upon their actions to date, you might suppose that Amazon have more interest in selling Kindle books than the Kindle readers to read them on. You might also think that Amazon might have a good idea where the big money will be made in the future e-book market. Perhaps this strategy is similar to selling cut price razors so as to cash in on the sales of razor blades? Only time will tell but, as far as books are concerned – be they hardback, paperback or electronic – you might expect Amazon to continue to be a market leader rather than a follower.