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Amazon must be absolutely delighted with the sales results for its Kindle reader family forin 2009. The Kindle 2.0 was released in February and the DX followed shortly afterwards in June. The Kindle very quickly achieved the position of Amazon’s best selling product – even prior to the global launch of the Kindle 2.0 in October.

During the 2009 festive season, the Kindle became Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever and, on Xmas 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 received a Kindle as a Christmas gift. It seems reasonable to suppose that, having unwrapped their gift and taken the Kindle out of the box, excited new Kindle users would wish to test their new toy. In all probability that would have involved connecting to the Amazon website and downloading one or two Kindle books.

Notwithstanding the above, 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 slightly artificial then perhaps that simply how well the Kindle fits into Amazon’s business model.

Of course Amazon’s competitors have been enviously eyeing their success and taking steps to ensure that they grab a share of the new e-book reader market. The list of companies with e-book readers under development reads like a who’s who of consumer electronics multinationals. Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Samsung are just a few of the competitors who will be taking on Amazon in 2010. And let’s not forget Barnes and Noble who have now released their own Nook e-book reader.

Many of the next generation readers will incorporate features which will make the Kindle, in its current format at least, look somewhat dated. Color displays, touch screen controls and a new industry standard format for e-books which will letusers to lend e-books to family and friends or even to borrow books 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 done so much to develop. The present iteration of the Kindles, whilst they were innovative only a few months ago, probably bear little 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 further success during 2010. Kindle users can look forward to an updated, enhanced Kindle loaded with new features – probably in the first six months of 2010. In the meantime expect Amazon to keep expanding the selection of Kindle books available on its Kindle store - so users will have the ideal marriage of hardware and software.