Why was the Amazon Kindle invented?

Answer 1

As with most other things Jeff Bezos does, the Kindle was probably invented because Bezos saw an unfilled niche in the market and had an idea about a way it could be filled. Historically, Bezos has been good at that, going all the way back to when he realized an internet bookstore didn't have to worry about shelf space restrictions and created Amazon to begin with.

At the time he was coming up with the idea, Bezos said that books were "the last bastion of analog." Nobody had yet been successful with an e-book device, though many companies (most notably electronics giant Sony) had tried. But on the other hand, most of those companies had approached it from the perspective of an electronics manufacturer. None had yet come from the position of a bookstore.

Jeff Bezos saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a market nobody yet wanted. No one had yet tried putting the power of a major corporation whose sole business was books behind an e-book device. But Amazon had the access to books (and publishers) that came from its position as one of the largest e-book retailers in the world. And it had the financial power to take a hit on its profits at first to build a gigantic market in the end. This gave Amazon a huge first-mover advantage.

Previous e-book stores had been handicapped by a lack of negotiating power. E-bookstores such as eReader (nee Peanut Press and Palm Digital Media) or Fictionwise didn't have much bargaining power with publishers, who by and large seemed to see e-books as unimportant. (Not surprising given that they didn't even make up 1% of the overall fiction mass market at the time.) E-book prices commonly stayed at hardcover levels even long after the book had gone to paperback, because publishers couldn't be bothered to keep the prices updated.

Amazon, on the other hand, had the bargaining power to get publishers to play ball. (Though even then, the publishers were in for a nasty shock. Bezos didn't happen to tell them he was planning to sell many bestselling titles as $9.99 loss leaders, losing money on every e-book in order to sell more Kindles. This would later lead to the establishment of publisher-controlled agency pricing, and a Department of Justice anti-trust lawsuit against the publishers, but that's another story.)

Until the Kindle, the e-book market had been in stagnation for over ten years. Bezos's Kindle created a feedback loop that kicked it into overdrive almost overnight. The more people bought Kindles, the more e-books became available for them. And the more e-books became available, the more people bought Kindles. And the more e-books and Kindles were sold, the more e-reader prices fell. And suddenly practically everyone is reading e-books.

So in the end, that is why the Kindle was invented: because Amazon could use it to establish dominance in a market nobody even knew existed yet. Who says evil geniuses only exist in the movies?

Answer 2

The Kindle was purposely invented to help people, so they did not have to turn pages, or hold a big, heavy book in their hands.

Answer 3

Well kindle means "to ignite" so I personally belive that the name for the device is symbolism for kindling the mind with knowledge.