Kick back with a nice Kindle? Some still prefer a good old paperback
- Amazon launched the first Kindle in November 2007, but sold this model only in the US
- The second-generation Kindle was made available to international markets in October 2009
When Amazon.com unveiled the Kindle about 11 years ago, the device was not the first e-reader in the market. But the Kindle generated such demand and enthusiasm from consumers around the world that it popularised e-books more than any e-reader or tablet.
The Kindle was designed to be a portable extension of Amazon’s popular online store, so users can easily buy virtual shelves of e-books with a touch of a button, as well as read all the available digital newspapers and blogs they desire. The first model also allowed up to 30 hours of reading on a full charge.
“We knew we would never out-book the book,” Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said at the launch of the Kindle on November 19, 2007. “We would have to take the technology and do things the book could never do.”
The Kindle’s success with e-books may be compared to how Apple gave a huge boost to digital music consumption worldwide after it introduced the iPod on October 23, 2001.
Still, it took a couple of years before the Kindle became widely available. Seattle-based Amazon did not release the first generation of the device outside the US. The Kindle 2, which was launched in October 2009, was the first model sold to international markets.
