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Amazon must be cock-a-hoop with the performance of its Kindle reader family duringin 2009. The Kindle 2.0 was released in February and the DX followed hard on its heels in June. The Kindle very rapidly achieved the position of Amazon’s best selling product – even prior to the international launch of the Kindle 2.0 in October.

In the course of the 2009 festive season, the Kindle became Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever and, on Christmas day 2009, Amazon sold more Kindle books than they did traditional printed volumes. Of course, that was probably due to all those lucky people who had woken up to find a Kindle in their stocking on Christmas morning. It seems reasonable to suppose that, having unwrapped their gift and got the Kindle out of the box, excited new Kindle owners would want to try out their new toy. That would probably have involved connecting to the Amazon website and downloading one or two Kindle books.

Even so, selling more Kindle books than paperbacks and hardbacks is still a significant milestone. Even though some will say that the method of achieving this was a little artificial then maybe that simply emphasises Amazon’s business model.

Of course Amazon’s competitors have been enviously eyeing their success and taking steps to ensure that they get a share of the new e-book reader market. The list of companies with e-book readers in development reads like a who’s who of consumer electronics giants. Sony, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft are just a few of the manufacturers who will be slugging it out with Amazon in 2010. Not to mention Barnes and Noble who have now released their own Nook e-book reader.

Many of the next generation readers will include features which will make the Kindle, in its current format at least, look somewhat dated. Touch screen controls, color displays and a new industry standard format for e-books which will letusers to lend e-books to family and friends or even to take out books on loan from participating digital libraries are just a sample of the features which users can expect in the near future.

One thing’s for sure, Amazon will not stand by whilst their competitors muscle in on the market which Amazon has been so instrumental in developing. The current Kindles, as innovative as they were just a few short months ago, probably bear no resemblance to what e-book readers will be like in the (very) near future. Amazon is probably already working on their next generation Kindle (the Kindle 4?) and, considering the level of innovation and drive they have displayed so far, Amazon would be justified in being quietly confident of achieving more success during 2010. Kindle users can look forward to an updated, enhanced Kindle packed with new features – probably in the first six months of 2010. We can also expect Amazon to keep expanding the selection of Kindle books available on its Kindle store – so users will have the ideal combination of hardware and software.