Amazon released their original Kindle ebook reader in November of 2007. It sold out in less than six hours and was then out of stock until April 2008. In February of 2009 the new and updated Kindle 2 was released and it consolidated Amazon’s present position as the biggest player in the ebook market.

In May of 2009, a mere three short months after the release of the Kindle 2, Amazon announced the launch of the Kindle DX – a bigger version of the Kindle with a larger display and the ability to read native pdf files.

It’s very obvious that Amazon consider the ebook market as a target for potential future growth and it’s worth noting that, despite the fact that alternatives do exist in terms of ebook reader devices, there have been few, if any, competitors with the necessary size and infrastructure to challenge Amazon’s dominance – up until now.

In early June of 2009 Google announced that it will launch a scheme for authors to sell digital versions of their books online before the end of 2009. This follows on from an earlier commitment to make public domain books available in downloadable digital format – and has led to a partnership with Sony who announced in March that they would make Google’s public domain ebook library available via their Sony PRS ebook reader.

Google’s scheme will allow a wider choice in how readers access ebooks. It seems improbable that Google will limit the downloads to one proprietary reader. At this time, books downloaded from the Amazon Kindle store can only be viewed on either the Amazon Kindle itself or the Apple iPod Touch or iPhone loaded with the necessary Kindle reading app.

It may also be an improvement for the authors of the books – Amazon has been criticised for retaining too large a share of the revenue generated by ebooks downloaded from its site.

The future market for ebooks and ebook readers is enormous, so it can come as no shock that Amazon finds itself with competition for a share of the potential revenue. However, until now the majority of the new developments in the field have been from companies intending to sell their own ebook readers, such as Plastic Logic who recently confirmed that they will launch a DX sized reader in 2010.

Google’s huge library of electronic titles, available for use across a number of different hardware platforms, has the potential to completely alter the marketplace for downloadable ebooks in the immediate future.

It’s also worth noting that, in a slightly ironic twist as the Kindle has frequently been called the “iPod of reading”, Apple may well be bringing out a tablet type PC in 2010 – which will be aimed somewhere between an iPod Touch and a MacBook. It would seem reasonable to assume that this may have the functionality to read ebooks, quite probably in a variety of different source files.

Perhaps more significant than the hardware considerations – it doesn’t take too great a stretch of the imagination to envisage that Apple could enhance their iStore to incorporate ebooks just as they already expanded to include video when the iPod Touch was launched. Conversely, were Apple to stick with an app which permitted their users to read Kindle books on their Apple hardware then Amazon’s position might be further solidified.

It’s a tribute to Amazon that practically any new development is the field of electronic books is currently dubbed the new “Kindle killer”. There’s no doubt that competition is going to be fierce in this market in the near future. Amazon surely won’t have it all their own way for much longer. Even so, they are the current dominant force in the marketplace and might reasonably be expected to play a significant role in the future of electronic reading.