Amazon's newly released third generation is selling extremely well at the moment. An upgrade – which includes a higher contrast screen, smaller and lighter casing, faster page turns and twice as much memory – accompanied by a price drop and the introduction of a new Wi-Fi only entry level model, has seen demand for the Kindle reader rocket.

Currently, the new upgraded Kindles are out of stock and prospective customers face a three to four week wait before any new ones begin shipping. Kindle books are now selling more than conventional hard cover editions on a regular basis. It looks to be no more than a matter of time before e-books start to outsell paperbacks.

Amazon has also opened a dedicated UK Kindle store so that UK customers don’t require to have their Kindles shipped across the Atlantic and can pay for their Kindle purchases in sterling rather than dollars. It seems probable that further “local” Kindle stores will be opened for other Amazon international websites such as Germany, France etc. in the not too distant future.

In short, everything in the garden is pretty rosy for Amazon right now. Suggestions that the launch of the Apple iPad would spell the death of the Kindle seem to be, for the moment at least, unfounded. Amazon’s policy of releasing free “apps” to allow Kindle books to be read on a variety of different devices looks to be paying dividends. So, considering what a massive success they have enjoyed with their first manufactured product, it’s hardly surprising that Amazon is rumored to be considering developing prototypes for personal tech gadgets other than the Kindle in their Lab 126 research facility.

Although Amazon has been tight-lipped on the subject, it’s thought that they may be thinking about music/movie players and possibly some kind of mobile phone. However, industry watchers suggest that, if Amazon wanted to enter the market with another gadget, then they would need to ensure that they add value rather than simply releasing another piece of personal electronic tech onto the market.

A great deal of the success of the Kindle reader must be attributed to Amazon’s strong association with books and reading in general. The huge number of Kindle books available – over 630,000 and increasing daily – and the fact that these can be read on so many other devices has been a real feather in Amazon’s cap. Any new gadget that Amazon decided to launch would probably need some similar type of support in order to achieve anything approaching the level of success enjoyed by the Kindle.