iPod was lucky, it took off further than anyone could imagine, but just because something is a good product doesn’t mean it is destined for success.

Perhaps the first sign that the e-reader will take off in a major way is the success of Amazon’s Kindle. While Dymocks and Sony continue to keep their fingers and toes crossed that their e-readers will soon boom in Australia, Amazon has been selling them quicker than they can find supplies. Some customers have had to wait up to six weeks for their Kindle to be delivered.

That’s a catastrophic delay in Amazon terms. I regularly buy books and CDs from Amazon, and to ship from the USA to Australia usually only takes two weeks, tops. I was hesitant as to whether or not e-readers would become as commonplace on daily commutes as the MP3 player, but I’m starting to believe, even if I personally don’t understand why you would want or need one.

My belief is that the success of the Kindle lies in how well it replicates the look and feel of a book. Let’s face it – you don’t need a Kindle or any other e-reader to read an e-book. Your laptop, PDA, smartphone or a number of other devices you already own could do the trick. Yes, the same goes for MP3, but the MP3 player had a head start, consumers were already used to shelling out hundreds of dollars on portable players. They had upgraded from portable cassette player to portable CD player to MiniDisc (some unfortunate souls anyway) and upgrading to an MP3 player was just a logical step. It also has to be remembered that at the time of the MP3 boom, laptops and other portable devices were still expensive and comparatively few people outside of businessmen and women owned them, so the market was ripe for the MP3 player.

The e-reader enters the market in a completely different environment.