The Amazon Kindle is doing phenomenally well in terms of sales and consumer knowledge of the product. So what better time than now to launch its successor, the Amazon Kindle 2.

The Amazon Kindle e-book reader was launched around this time last year to a fanfare of “so what!” and “who cares?”. This was mainly due to the expensive launch price of the device, and the lack of availability of licensed e-books of famous titles.

The Kindle has seemingly got past these issues and into people’s pockets though, as estimated sales figures up to August were around the 250,000 mark. This lead to parallels being drawn between the Kindle and the iPod, the latter of which enjoyed roughly the same first year sales as the former. And we all know what happened to the iPod after that.

There have been rumours of a new Amazon Kindle 2 on the horizon for a few months now, but today sees the first evidence of such. Boy Genius Report claims to have got hold of some exclusive shots of the device from an inside source known only as ‘Ninja’.

Out has gone the weird angular shape, with a nice, rounded iPod-look brought in to replace it. Also gone is the weird binder-type carrying case, with a more traditional and more user-friendly leather pouch replacing it.

The device is only slightly smaller than the original, but that means the screen has remained almost exactly the same size as well. The buttons on the side of the device are smaller so as to avoid accidental turning of pages, one of the most common complaints concerning the original unit.

The back of the unit is now metal, and the Kindle 2 can be charged via USB rather than with its own charger. The SD card slot has vanished and the battery doesn’t look to be accessible any longer. Something that has remained intact is the use of EV-DO for downloads.

This is obviously only a rumour but it looks genuine enough and would just confirm the speculation already doing the rounds of a new model. Amazon hasn’t yet said a word about this leak, so no price has yet been revealed, and there’s also no news on the long-awaited European release.

If this is indeed a genuine product, and not just a prototype, then expect an announcement from Amazon very soon.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 at 3:32 pm under Amazon, Ecommerce, Leaks, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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