It’s been a huge year for e-book readers – largely due to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon launched the Kindle 2 in February 2009, which was an updated and enhanced edition of the original Kindle which was released in November 2007.

In June of 2009, Amazon followed up with the Kindle DX, which was a large format version of the Kindle 2. It was specifically targeted at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a buzz.

The possibilities for academic use – from interactive textbooks to continually updated texts, and not overlooking the opportunity for academic bodies to save a good deal of money – attracted a lot of attention. As well as signing agreements with a number of colleges and universities, Amazon got a lot of free publicity from political bodies such as the New Democratic Leadership Council and also Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his capacity as Governor of California.

Thanks to Amazon’s foresight and determination – assisted by all the free publicity – the Amazon Kindle reader has now become Amazon’s best selling product. At the moment, the Kindle has an astonishing 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market and has recently launched an international edition. The Kindle has become virtually synonymous with e-book readers.

It’s probably worth remembering that Amazon were, in fact, a late entrant to the e-book reader market. The first e-book reader, the Franklin eBookman, hit the market in 1999 – ten years ago. The Sony PRS reader was launched in 2007, prior to the launch of the original Kindle.

Amazon may been late to market – but by a combination of marketing, technical innovation and an awareness of customer needs, Amazon has achieved its present dominant position. The huge choice of titles available for the Kindle on Amazon’s website and the wireless connectivity (with no monthly fee) were every bit as key to the Kindle’s success as were the technical features of the device.

However, now that Amazon has – almost single handedly – developed the market, it seems that manufacturers of consumer electronics want their share. Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Barnes and Noble, iRex, Plastic Logic, Asus – the list continues – all have their own devices ready for launch or in the late stages of development.

Wireless connectivity, presently one of Amazon’s powerful selling points, will become normal and Barnes and Noble will offer users of their new Nook reader more than 1,000,000 titles to choose from. The new Sony Daily Edition reader will allow users to borrow books on loan from participating lending libraries. Meanwhile, there will probably be a standard e-book format adopted in 2010, which will allow users to lend e-books to family and friends or transfer them over to other readers if they want.

At the moment, a lot of industry analysts are eyeing the line up of new readers and trying to predict which of them is the Kindle Killer. However, Amazon has been pretty smart thus far and they won’t give up their top position without a fight. It took them less than eighteen months following the launch of the first Kindle to launch the hugely enhanced Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. Amazon almost certainly has big plans for the future development of their Kindle family. Could it be that the Kindle killer will turn out to be the Kindle 4 and that we could see this sometime in 2010?