Loading...The Kindle Touch is Amazon’s flagship eReading device, and will soon be available in the UK for £109 for the Wi-Fi version or £139 for the 3G version, and will be available throughout Europe and the UK on the same date of 27th April 2012.
The Kindle Touch is fully touch screen and allows users to browse the book store and type on an onscreen touch keyboard. It also allows you to turn the pages quickly and easily by tapping one side of the screen or the other.
Being able to hold up to 3,000 books, the Amazon Kindle Touch will be able to store more than a lifetime’s worth of novels, and it is so light and compact that you can take it anywhere with you. The e-ink screen allows you to read even in the most direct sunlight, mimicking a normal book page perfectly.
On Amazon.com, the Kindle Touch is currently number 2 in the best sellers list – right behind the Kindle Fire tablet, and just ahead of the Kindle 4; the last eReader to be released in Europe from Amazon. Surely this suggests that the Kindle Touch will do just as well, if not better? Perhaps not…
The Kindle 4 was the biggest selling device in the lead up to Christmas in 2011, and at the price of just £89 it seemed almost stupid not to buy one for yourself or for a loved one, or both. The £109 price point may be just too steep to sway those that are umming-and-arring about buying one.
Another major decisive factor that could influence sales of the Kindle Touch is its release date. Releasing the Kindle 4 just before Christmas made it an impulse purchase for many, but with an April release (often one of the worst months for retail companies); will it see the same massive surge in demand?
However, new devices from the biggest companies always whip up a bit of a storm, with the attitude of many consumers being that they simply must have the newest devices. There are also large enough differences between the Kindle 4 and the Kindle Touch to sway people who already own the previous model to perhaps upgrade – text-to-speech, 50% larger memory and of course the fact that it has a touch screen. The battery life also stands at around two months based on half an hour a day of reading time, which is simply phenomenal.
Who knows whether the Kindle Touch will be a huge success? I guess we will find out on the 27th April and the weeks afterwards, but my guess is that it will be more successful than the Kindle 3 but not quite as successful as the Kindle 4.