The Amazon Kindle is a series of e-book readers designed and marketed by Amazon.com. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other digital media via wireless networking. The hardware platform, developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126, began as a single device and now comprises a range of devices, including dedicated e-readers with E Ink electronic paper displays, and Android-based tablets with color LCD screens.
The Kindle name was devised by branding consultant Michael Cronan who was asked by Lab 126 to name the product. Cronan and partner Karin Hibma suggested Kindle, meaning to light a fire.They felt this was an apt metaphor for reading and intellectual excitement. Kindle hardware has evolved from the original Kindle introduced in 2007 and a Kindle DX line (with a larger screen) introduced in 2009. The range now includes devices with a keyboard (Kindle Keyboard), devices with touch-sensitive screens (Kindle Paperwhite), a tablet computer with a reader app and a color display (Kindle Fire) , and a low-priced model with an on-screen keyboard (Kindle).
| Generation | Production date | Price | Features |
| First Generation | November 19, 2007 | US$399 | 6 inches (diagonal) 4-level grayscale display, with 250 MB of internal memory, which can hold approximately 200 non-illustrated titles.[14] It also has a speaker and headphone jack that allows the user to access audio files on Kindle. |
| Second Generation | February 10, 2009 | On July 8, 2009, Amazon reduced price of the Kindle 2 from the original $359 to $299. On October 7, 2009, Amazon further reduced the price of the Kindle 2 to $259.The Kindle 2 had a manufacturing materials cost estimated at $185.49, in 2009 by iSuppli. | a text-to-speech option to read the text aloud, and 2 GB of internal memory of which 1.4 GB is user-accessible. By Amazon's estimates, the Kindle 2 can hold about 1,500 non-illustrated books. Unlike the first-generation Kindle, Kindle 2 does not have a slot for SD memory cards.It was slimmer than the original Kindle. |
| Third Generation | third generation of the Kindle, later called the Kindle Keyboard, on July 28, 2010 | The Kindle Keyboard is available in two versions. One of these, the Kindle Wi-Fi, was initially priced at $139 / GB£111 and connects to the Internet exclusively via Wi-Fi networks.The other version, considered a replacement to the Kindle 2, was priced at $189 / £152 and includes both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity | The built-in free 3G connectivity uses the same wireless signals that cell phones use, allowing it to download and purchase content from any location with cell service.The Kindle Keyboard with 3G is available in two colors: classic white and graphite. Both models use the newer E Ink "Pearl" display, which has a higher contrast than prior displays and a faster refresh rate. However, it remains slower than traditional LCDs |
| Kindle 4(Forth Generation) | September 28, 2011 | $79 ad-supported, $109 no ads | 6 inch e-ink display of the previous Kindle model as well as Amazon's experimental web-browsing capability with Wi-Fi, the fourth-generation Kindle features a slight reduction in weight and size in a silver-grey bezel, as well as nine hard keys, a cursor pad, an on-screen rather than physical keyboard, a flash storage capacity of 2 GB, and an estimated one month battery life. |
| Kindle Touch(Forth Generation) | September 28, 2011 | available with Wi-Fi ($99 ad-supported, $139 no ads) or Wi-Fi/3G connectivity ($149 ad-supported, $189 no ads). | 3G the device is able to connect to the Kindle Store, download books and periodicals, and access Wikipedia. Experimental web browsing (outside of Wikipedia) on Kindle Touch 3G is only available over Wi-Fi.(Kindle Keyboard continues without this restriction). The usage of the 3G data is limited to 50MB per month.The device uses the same 6 inch E-ink screen of the previous Kindle model, with the addition of an infrared touch-screen control.Like its predecessor, the Kindle Touch has a capacity of 4 GB and battery life of two months. |
| Fifth Generation | The Kindle Paperwhite (1st generation) was released on October 1, 2012 | Wi-Fi ($119 ad-supported, $139 no ads) and Wi-Fi + 3G ($179 ad-supported, $199 no ads) | It has a 6 in, 212 PPI display (an almost-XGA resolution of 758×1024) with built-in LEDs to illuminate the screen, and has 2GB of storage (1.25GB usable). It was available in Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G models,[56] with the ad-supported options only available in the United States.The light is one of the main features of the Paperwhite, but the light level must be adjusted manually. The 3G access restrictions are the same as the Kindle Touch, and usage of the 3G data is limited to 50 MB per month. Additional data can be purchased.Battery life is advertised at up to eight weeks of reading with half an hour per day with wireless off and constant light usage; this usage equals 28 hours.It includes the experimental web browser with the same 3G data restrictions as the Kindle Touch. The official leather cover for the Paperwhite uses the hall effect sensor in the device that detects when the cover is closed/opened to turn the screen off/on respectively. |
| Sixth Generation | Amazon announced the Kindle Paperwhite (2nd generation), marketed as the "All-New Kindle Paperwhite" and colloquially referred to as the Paperwhite 2, on September 3, 2013 | the Wi-Fi version was released in the USA on September 30, 2013 ($119 ad-supported, $139 no ads), and the 3G/Wi-Fi version was released in the USA on November 5, 2013 ($189 ad-supported, $209 no ads) | a higher contrast E Ink Carta display technology, improved LED illumination, 25% faster processor (1 GHz) that allows for faster page turns, and better response to touch input compared to the original Paperwhite. It has the same 6" screen with 212 PPI and bezel as the original Paperwhite. The software features dictionary/Wikipedia/X-Ray look-up, Page Flip that allows the user to skip ahead or back in the text in a pop-up window and go back to the previous page, and Goodreads social integration. |
| Kindle 6(Seventh Generation) | September 18, 2014 | $79 ad-supported, $99 no ads | It is the first basic Kindle to use a touchscreen for navigating books, and there is no longer a touchscreen-less Kindle choice | Kindle Voyage(Seventh Generation) | October 21, 2014 | It is available in Wi-Fi ($199 ad-supported, $219 no ads) and Wi-Fi + 3G ($269 ad-supported, $289 no ads) models. | a new design of flush glass screen and rear power button, similar to the Kindle Fire HDX. The Voyage uses a new method of turning pages, called 'PagePress'. There are sensors on either side of the screen and if pressed it turns the page.PagePress can be disabled, but touchscreen page turns cannot be turned off since the touchscreen is the UI. Amazon claims it has 6 weeks of life if used for 30 minutes a day with wireless disabled and brightness set to 10, this means 21 hours of use. |
| Product Name | Production Date | Price | Features |
| Kindle Fire | September 28, 2011 | $199 | an Android-based tablet that uses a fork of Android called Fire OS 1.It has a 7 in IPS color touchscreen display. This was the first Kindle without an E Ink display. However, unlike previously released Kindles, it has no 3G option, but only Wi-Fi. It has 8 GB of storage and a projected battery life of up to eight hours.In September 2012, the Kindle Fire was refreshed to have more RAM, a faster processor, an updated OS, and price reduced to $159. |
| Kindle Fire HD | September 6, 2012, | Introductory pricing was at $199 and $299, respectively for the 16 GB versions; both Fire HD were sold at cost. | The Kindle Fire HD is the second generation of Amazon's color touchscreen Kindle Fire tablet line. It is available in two form factors, 7 in and 8.9 in screen sizes.The 7 in version was released on September 14, while the 8.9 in model (with either Wi-Fi or 4G model) was released on November 20, 2012. In October 2013, the Fire HD 7 in was refreshed using the Fire HDX unibody and had its price reduced to $139.In October 2014, Amazon released a refreshed Fire HD in 6-inch and 7-inch sizes. |
| Kidnle Fire HDX | September 25, 2013 | Introductory prices of $229 and $379, respectively, for the 16 GB version with special offers. | The Kindle Fire HDX is the third generation of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet line. It is available in 7 in and 8.9 in screen sizes.Both tablets are also available in 32 and 64 GB versions.[ |
Amazon released a "Kindle for PC" application in late 2009, available as a free download for Microsoft Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP.This application allows thousands of books to be read on a personal computer in color, with no Kindle unit required, as e-books can simply be purchased from Amazon's store.Amazon later released a version for the Apple Macintosh, in early 2010.In June 2010, Amazon released a "Kindle for Android" version. With the Google Android application release, versions for the Apple iPhone, the iPad, Windows and Mac computers, and BlackBerry cellphones are also available.In January 2011, Amazon released Kindle for MS Windows Phone 7.In July 2011, Kindle for HP TouchPad (running under webOS) was released in the US as a beta version.In August 2011, Amazon released an HTML5 based webapp supporting the Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers called Kindle Cloud Reader.As of 2013, Amazon has expressed no interest in releasing a separate application for the GNU/Linux operating system; however, the Cloud Reader can be used in Linux using the browser.
Content from Amazon and some other content providers is primarily encoded in Amazon's proprietary Kindle format (AZW, KF8). It is also possible to load content in various formats from a computer by transferring it to the Kindle via a USB cable or by emailing it to a registered email address provided by Amazon (for a fee via 3G, or free via Wi-Fi); the email service can convert a number of document formats to Amazon's AZW format and then transmit the result to the associated Kindle over Whispernet. Amazon also has an application and browser extension called "Send to Kindle," which users can use to convert a web page to a format that can be read on Kindle. In addition to published content, Kindle users can also access the Internet using the experimental web browser, which uses NetFront.
The Kindle's terms of use forbid transferring Amazon e-books to another user or a different type of device.However, Amazon now allows limited lending of certain titles.Users can select reading material using the Kindle itself or through a computer at the Amazon Kindle store and can download content through the Kindle Store, which upon the initial launch of the Kindle had more than 88,000 digital titles available for download. This number continued steadily increasing to more than 275,000 by late 2008, and exceeded 500,000 in the spring of 2010. As of July 4, 2011, there were more than 765,000 books available for download, about 36,000 of them in German.As of July 2014, there are over 2.7 million titles available for at the Kindle Store.
Specific Kindle sales numbers are not released by the company; however, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, stated in a shareholders' meeting in January 2010 that "millions of people now own Kindles".According to anonymous inside sources, over three million Kindles had been sold as of December 2009, while external estimates, as of Q4-2009, place the number at about 1.5 million.According to James McQuivey of Forrester Research, estimates are ranging around four million, as of mid-2010.On March 6, 2011, AT&T stores officially started sales of the Amazon Kindle.
In 2010, Amazon remained the undisputed leader in the e-reader category, accounting for 59% of e-readers shipped, and it gained 14 percentage points in share.According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) study from March 2011, sales for all e-book readers worldwide reached 12.8 million in 2010; 48% of them were Kindles.
In December 2011, Amazon announced that customers had purchased "well over" one million Kindles per week since the end of November 2011; this includes all available Kindle models and also the Kindle Fire tablet.IDC estimated that the Kindle Fire sold about 4.7 million units during the fourth quarter of 2011.Pacific Crest estimated that the Kindle Fire models sold six million units during Q4 2012.
Morgan Stanley estimates that Amazon sold $3.57 billion worth of Kindle e-readers and tablets in 2012, $4.5 billion in Kindle device sales in 2013 and $5 billion in Kindle device sales in 2014.
Operating system updates are designed to be received wirelessly and installed automatically during a period in sleep mode in which Wi-Fi is turned on.Kindles are charged using either a computer's USB port or an AC adapter. The Kindle also contains experimental features such a basic web browser.Users can also play MP3 music in the background, if the device supports MP3 playback.
Kindle devices do not support the EPUB file format used by many other e-book readers. Instead, they are designed to use Amazon's own e-book formats: AZW, and, in fourth generation and later Kindles, AZW3, also called KF8.[Like EPUB, these formats are intended for reflowable, richly formatted e-book content and support DRM restrictions, but unlike EPUB, they are proprietary formats. Free software such as the free and open source calibre, Amazon's KindleGen, and the email based Send-to-Kindle service are available to convert e-books into these formats. Kindle devices can also display some generic document formats such as plain text (TXT) and Portable Document Format (PDF) files; however, reflowing is not supported for these file types. Instead text size may be increased or decreased on the screen by zooming, which means one has to scroll right to read the end of a line and back left to start reading the next line and so on. This may be avoided by converting the PDF file to MOBI format using calibre e-book management software.
Amazon offers an email-based service that will convert GIF, PNG, and BMP graphics to AZW.Amazon will also convert HTML pages and Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX) documents through the same email-based mechanism, which will send a Kindle-formatted file to the device via 3G for $0.15 per MB or via Wi-Fi for free. In addition, this service can send unprotected Mobi files to a user's Kindle. These services can be accessed by Kindle devices, iOS devices running Kindle app version 2.9 or greater, and Android devices running Kindle app version 3.5 or greater.
A book may be downloaded from Amazon to several devices at the same time. The devices sharing the book must be registered to the same Amazon account. A sharing limit typically ranges from one to six devices, depending on an undisclosed number of licenses set by the book publisher. When a limit is reached, the user must remove the book from some device or unregister a device containing the book in order to add a book to another device.
The original Kindle and Kindle 2 did not allow the user to organize books into folders. The user could only select what type of content to display on the home screen and whether to organize by author, title, or download date. Kindle software version 2.5 (released July 2010) allowed for the organization of books into "Collections" which behave like non-structured tags/labels: a collection can not include other collections, and one book may be added to multiple collections. These collections are normally set and organized on the Kindle itself, one book at a time. The set of all collections of a first Kindle device can be imported to a second Kindle device that is connected to the cloud and is registered to the same user; as the result of this operation, the documents that are on the second device now become organized according to the first device's collections. calibre had a plugin that made it possible to organize these collections on a computer, but this plugin no longer functions on newer models such as the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire. There remains no option to organize by series or series order, as the AZW format does not possess the necessary metadata fields.
Users can bookmark, highlight, and search through content. Pages can be bookmarked for reference, and notes can be added to relevant content. While a book is open on the display, menu options allow users to search for synonyms and definitions from the built-in dictionary. The device also remembers the last page read for each book. Pages can be saved as a "clipping", or a text file containing the text of the currently displayed page. All clippings are appended to a single file, which can be downloaded over a USB cable.Due to the TXT format of the clippings file, all formatting (such as bold, italics, bigger fonts for headlines, etc.) is stripped off the original text.
On July 18, 2011, Amazon began a program that allows college students to rent Kindle textbooks from three different publishers for a fixed period of time.
Kindle devices may report information about their users' reading habits "such as up-time [and] last page read" to Amazon.The exact data collected and sent is unclear, though.
Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener stated that the company is "... changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."On July 23, 2009, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos posted an apology about the company's handling of the matter on Amazon's official Kindle forum. Bezos said the action was "stupid", and that the executives at Amazon "deserve the criticism received."
On September 4, 2009, Amazon offered affected users a restoration of the deleted e-books, an Amazon gift certificate, or a check for the amount of $30.
In December 2010, three e-books by author Selena Kitt were removed due to violations of Amazon's publishing guidelines. For what Amazon describes as "a brief period of time," the books were unavailable for redownload by users who had already purchased them. This ability was restored after it was brought to Amazon's attention; however, no remote deletion took place.
In October 2012, Amazon deleted every book that Linn Nygaard, an IT consultant living in Norway, had purchased, and canceled her Amazon account. Amazon claimed that she had violated their terms of service, but was not specific as to what she had done wrong. The next day Amazon restored her account and books.