2009 has been a huge year for e-book readers – mainly due to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon debuted the Kindle 2 in February 2009, which was an improved and enhanced version of the original Kindle which was launched in November 2007.

In June of 2009, Amazon followed up with the Kindle DX, which was a large display version of the Kindle 2. It was specifically aimed at readers of magazines, newspapers and academic textbooks – and it caused quite a buzz.

The potential for academic use – from interactive textbooks to continually updated texts, and not overlooking the possibility for academic bodies to save a good deal of money – attracted a lot of attention. As well as signing agreements with a number of colleges and universities, Amazon gained a lot of free publicity from political bodies such as the New Democratic Leadership Council and even Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his capacity as Governor of California.

Thanks to Amazon’s foresight and innovation – aided by all the free publicity – the Amazon Kindle reader has now become Amazon’s top selling product.Currently, the Kindle has an impressive 60% share of the U.S. e-book reader market and has recently launched an international version. The Kindle has become virtually synonymous with e-book readers.

It’s probably worth noting that Amazon were, in fact, a late entrant to the e-book reader market. The original e-book reader, the Franklin eBookman, hit the market in 1999 – ten years ago. The Sony PRS reader was launched in 2007, prior to the launch of the original Kindle.

Amazon may not have been first to market – but by combining effective, technical innovation and responsiveness to customer needs, Amazon has achieved its present dominant position. The huge selection of ebooks available for the Kindle on Amazon’s website and the wireless connectivity (with no monthly fee) were every bit as key to the Kindle’s success as were the technical aspects of the reader.

However, now that Amazon has – almost single handedly – established the market, it seems that every man and his dog want their share. Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Barnes and Noble, iRex, Plastic Logic, Asus – the list goes on – all have their own devices ready for launch or in the final stages of development.

Wireless connectivity, presently one of Amazon’s powerful selling points, will become standard and Barnes and Noble will offer users of their new Nook reader over 1,000,000 titles to choose from. The new Sony Daily Edition reader will permit users to borrow books on loan from participating lending libraries. Meanwhile, there will probably be a standard e-book format agreed in 2010, which will allow users to lend e-books to friends and family or port them across to other readers if they want.

Currently, a lot of industry analysts are checking out the line up of new readers and trying to guess which of them is the Kindle Killer. However, Amazon has been pretty smart thus far and they won’t surrender their top position without a fight. It took them under eighteen months after the launch of the first Kindle to launch the much improved Kindle 2. The DX followed just a few months later. Amazon almost certainly has big plans for the further development of their e-book readers. Is it possible that the Kindle killer will turn out to be the Kindle 4 and that we could see this sometime next year?