Amazon's Kindle, Now in French and German

Even though Amazon's Kindle e-reader has so far been preeminent on the e-reader market, this performance was mainly due to the fact that it did not see any strong competition besides the Nook and Sony's device. However, between the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show and the present time, the market saw multiple companies launching devices such as the Skiff and LG's flexible e-paper. Amazon is already putting effort in keeping its e-book reader at the top by improving its own device, with its latest move being the expansion of Kindle's Digital Text Platform (DTP). 

The actual move of Amazon consists of allowing a significantly larger number of authors to upload and sell their books in the Kindle Store. The books may be written in English, French and German and the authors/publishers themselves no longer need to be based in the United States to do so.  

“We are excited to make the self-service Kindle Digital Text Platform available to authors and publishers around the world,” Russ Grandinetti, vice president, Kindle Content, said. “Now any content owner can offer English, German or French-language books to the fast-growing audience of Kindle owners around the globe.”  

The Kindle is Amazon's product that performed the best during the fourth quarter of 2009, especially in December, when the number of sold Kindle copies broke the record for monthly sales, even though it was still around the middle of the month. Amazon even sold more e-books than physical ones on Christmas Day.  

The only setback suffered by Amazon's e-reader was the choice of four U.S universities, under pressure form the U.S. Justice Department, to not promote the use of e-readers in the classroom. This policy will remain in effect until the Kindle gains design elements that would make it usable by students that are blind or have poor vision.