Kindle e-book goes international

By Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 07 October 2009 09:54

Home IT

Amazon is expanding the availability of its Kindle e-book device to more than 100 countries, including Australia. Hundreds of thousands of titles are offered, mostly at prices below the print editions.

Australia, India and China are among the 100-plus countries where Amazon is now selling its Kindle e-book reader. It has previously been sold only in the US.

Canada and New Zealand are among the English speaking markets where the device remains unavailable.

The $US279 6in Kindle offered internationally weighs less than 300g and is supposed to work for days on a single charge.

The device uses the mobile phone network to download content, without having to use a computer as a intermediary. Amazon's not saying which carrier it uses in Australia, but one look at the coverage map shows it clearly isn't Telstra.

According to that map, 3G coverage is limited to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra. There are also large areas - even in the more populous states - that even lack the slower EDGE/GPRS coverage.

Users outside coverage areas can download content to a PC and then transfer it to the Kindle.

There's more on the available content on page 2, so please read on.