At long last international customers of Amazon are going to be able to pick up a Kindle of their own.

Ever since Amazon launched its ebook reader, the Kindle, in Nov. 2007, international customers have been locked out of using it due to its lack of wireless support outside of the USA.  Why it took two years to rectify this is anyone’s guess, but it had indeed finally been taken of.

Starting today, Amazon has lowered the price of the Kindle from $299 to $259 for customers in the USA, and international customers will be able to order their edition for $279.   Although if you are a frequent international traveler, it may not be such a bad idea to spend the extra $20 and get yourself the new version.

“Kindle is the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items we sell on Amazon, and we’re excited to be able to lower the price,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “We’re also excited to announce a new addition to the Kindle family—Kindle with global wireless. At home or abroad in over 100 countries, you can think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds.”

The new international version features wireless support for customers in over 100 countries. While there is no mention in the press release of each country getting its own Kindle download store, due to copyright issues, languages and so on, one has to assume that each country will receive its own native book store to access.

The U.S. Kindle store has added over 75,000 more books over the past five months, and starting today the Lonely Planet series of travel guides has joined the fray.

There are a slew of new ebook readers being shown at consumer electronics shows around the world at the moment, so the price drop combined with the new edition of the device is probably a way to try to gain more market share before those launch.  No matter what caused it, it is nice to finally see one of these that can be used pretty much anywhere.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 4:50 pm under Amazon.

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
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