E-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle have been around for a good few years - one of the first models was the Sony Data Discman, a portable device (which Sony called an 'Electronic Book Player') that read e-book data directly from pre-recorded CDs. Despite being ahead of its time, the Data Discman did not see success in most countries (with a notable exception being Japan). There were numerous attempts to create marketable e-book readers in the intervening years before the launch of the Amazon Kindle, but it was the Amazon device that really took the electronic book market into the big league.

There are a few factors that contributed to the success of the Amazon Kindle, outside of the excellent branding and marketing strategy. Firstly, the invention and availability of E ink (a version of electronic paper, or e-paper) solved a problem that many may have assumed to be unsolvable - the fact that looking at a computer screen with enough concentration to read text can get quite uncomfortable quite quickly, especially when the screen and the text are small. The technology behind E ink has in fact been around since the 1970s, but only became a mass-market concern in the mid-2000s, when it was incorporated into e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle. E ink displays look much more like regular paper books than traditional LCD screens, and are thus much more comfortable to read for long periods of time.

The second factor that influenced the mass adoption of E-book readers, and the Kindle in particular, was the increasing prevalence of super-fast broadband internet connections and the increasing acceptance of online shopping and digital downloads as a means to purchase entertainment products. Many people no longer feel the need to own books, music and films in a physical form, and are happy to sacrifice the supposed permanence of such items for the convenience and portability that digital versions offer. Just as Apple's iPod popularised the idea of huge portable music libraries, the Amazon Kindle showed that books could be stored and enjoyed in a digital form.

The first-generation Kindle was introduced in 2007. This Kindle was available only in the United States, and was an immediate success in that country, with the first units selling out in just five and a half hours. The second-generation Kindle, released in early 2009, improved on the original design in almost every way, featuring a much larger internal memory (able to hold approximately 1500 books without illustrations) and a sleek, modern design. Later in 2009, Amazon released the international version of the Kindle, which - for the first time - allowed users in more than 100 countries to download and read books on the move.

This model was superseded by the third-generation Kindle - commonly known as the 'Kindle Keyboard' because of its redesigned input keys. Since then, Amazon has introduced a number of other models, including the fourth-generation Kindle (which features a sleeker design and removes the keyboard), the Kindle Touch (which adds touch screen functionality) and the Kindle Fire (which features a colour display).
The Amazon Kindle has revolutionised the e-book industry, and its popularity seems to be as strong as ever - in late 2010, Amazon announced that sales of electronic books had surpassed those of standard printed books for the first time in its history.