Innovating for the Mobile End-User Market: Amazon's Kindle 2 Strategy as Emerging Business Model

Abstract

Using the example of Amazon's Kindle 2 launch, this exploratory case study research investigates an emerging mobile business model in the eBook market that closely connects an innovative device with access to content. Reflecting on the business model and innovation literature, the paper points to the potential of mobile business model that relies on radical innovations to change industry structures. Based on the case study of Kindle 2, the study reveals the need to align innovative products and services with a company's overall brand strategy to avoid dilution. It suggests that a mobile business model based on a proprietary approach can be successful in the short run; its long run success depends on the ability to react to new market requirements and competitors. The paper concludes with a reflection of how business models need to be dynamically readjusted in such a fast moving field."There are about 5m e-readers in circulation worldwide and double that amount will be sold in ." Economist.com, 2009

Technological competition: a path towards commoditization or differentiation? Some evidence from a comparison of e-book readers

“…The first version of the Kindle, for which more than 90,000 e-books were made available (MarketLine, 2013), was originally released by Amazon in the United States in November 2007. Its successor, the Kindle 2, was introduced in February 2009, and the expanded version, Kindle DX, was brought to the market in June 2009 (Loebbecke et al, 2010). It total, five generations of the Kindle were released by Amazon between 2007 and 2013 (MarketLine, 2013).…”

The democratization of intangible luxury

“…Amazon not only sells products through its online retailing platform, but it also has its own products that it uses to compete with the likes of Google and Apple. It has established a wide ecosystem of devices such as the Echo products, Fire TVs and Kindle books (Loebbecke et al , 2010). Research shows that Amazon’s Alexa allows for the integration with other Amazon products through voice commands as well as other third-party devices that can also be integrated using the virtual assistant (Chung et al , 2017).…”

Use of Critical Annotation and Interactive Fiction for the Creation of Digital Educational Content

“…Most of the tools are designed for professional environments [6] where technical knowledge is required that makes them complex to use by a student. In the same way, these tools are not intended to be used in a learning process by a teacher [27]. Thus a teacher can not raise activities or learning exercises.…”