Happy birthday Kindle
The market-defining e-reader was launched five years ago.
When Amazon launched the Kindle e-reader on November 19, 2007, it was met with excitement by technology journalists -- finally here was a device that could be slipped into a pocket that had a large screen and 3G internet connectivity -- and with bewilderment by many consumers who asked, quite rightly, why an ‘electronic' book should cost $399 when real ones were roughly 99 percent cheaper. Despite some people's bafflement, the original batch of Amazon e-readers sold out immediately, creating a six-month waiting list for the device. Now, five years and five iterations later on, e-readers are almost as ubiquitous as smartphones, and the price of the Kindle has dropped significantly, with one model going for $69.
As we move further into the future, 2007 could prove to be one of those seminal dates. As well as the launch of the Kindle -- which has changed reading habits and revolutionized the publishing industry -- 2007 will also go down in history as the year the iPhone was born and when Android was officially launched (it would take until 2008 for the operating system's first phone to come to market). It was also the year that Microsoft launched Vista, its most poorly received operating system to date, signaling a decline in tech authority to come for Microsoft, as Apple and Google made advances.
