If you recall last June, Amazon dropped the price on Kindle 2 by $60.00, four month after it was released. Another month later, Kindle 2 price dropped by another $40.00. You can now buy brand new Kindle 2 for $259.00. You are probably asking, but in case you have purchased your Kindle for $299.00 within the last month, you can call Amazon Kindle support and ask for a $40.00 refund to match the price cut down. Several users have confirmed that Amazon easily gives these out and sometimes they are compromising and will give you a refund even if you have had your device for slightly more than a calendar month.

Kindle International

Well, it looks like competition from Sony, Google, Plastic Logic and other players is driving Amazon to cut prices to stay competitive. Amazon can now cut the price because larger production and sales volume resulted in cost reduction and they are passing some of the savings to the customers. Since debuting, the Kindle has controlled e-reader mindshare in the United States, but has faced serious competition from senior e-reader maker Sony, which not only makes the lowest priced product, but also the most feature-packed product as well. Sony’s Daily Edition Reader has 3G wireless from AT&T, a touchscreen interface, and the ability to borrow e-books from participating libraries.

But the Kindle may not be exactly the thing some potential buyers need. As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in airports in the last 2 years will tell you, the Kindle is very popular among travelers. Unfortunately, the device’s Sprint-friendly CDMA connectivity is all but useless overseas. Users who have taken their Kindle to another country and want to obtain new content have no wireless options. To address this, Amazon today has also unveiled the “US and International Wireless” Kindle for $279.99, which can be used on the 3G networks in more than 100 countries.

And travelers appear to be the main group targeted in this device launch, rather than actual international markets, since Amazon’s Kindle Store still deals almost exclusively in English language literature. There are a handful of products in other languages, though, and Amazon pointed out today that a number of international periodicals are available for subscription, such as La Stampa (Italian), El Pais and El Universal (Spanish), O Globo (Portuguese), Le Monde (French), and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German). However, there are major limitations preventing the device from use in other languages.

Amazon Kindle has millions of potential customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books. International Kindle version will enable these customers to think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds. International Kindle customers will have access to about 220,000 book titles at its Kindle Store. Publishers involved with the store include Simon &
Schuster, HarperCollins, Lonely Planet, Harlequin, Penguin, Bloomsbury, and Hachette, and many more. Amazon also announced that it would cut the price of its U.S. Kindle by $40 to $259, making it more in line with Sony’s Reader Pocket Edition which is selling for $199. With the announcements, Amazon is attempting to position itself for a boom in e-reader sales that Forrester Research expects in the U.S. over the next few years. In a report to be released Wednesday, Forrester Research raised its 2009 forecast for e-reader sales in the United States to 3 million units from its previous prediction of 2 million sales. Forrester Research also expects Amazon Kindle to command about 60 percent of the e-reader market in 2009, compared with 35 percent for Sony’s Reader.

During this 2009 holiday season, e Readers will be one category that will be a break away success, as many experts are predicting. Lower prices, more content, more effective distribution, and lots of media exposure are contributing to rapid adoption of e Reader devices in 2008 and this year.