Amazon Kindle

Amazon Kindle is a series of e-readers designed and marketed by Amazon. Amazon Kindle devices enable users to browse, buy, download, and read e-books, newspapers, magazines and other digital media via wireless networking to the Kindle Store. The hardware platform, which Amazon subsidiary Lab126 developed, began as a single device in 2007. Currently, it comprises a range of devices, including e-readers with E Ink electronic paper displays and Kindle applications on all major computing platforms. All Kindle devices integrate with Windows and macOS and Kindle Store content and, as of March 2018, the store had over six million e-books available in the United States. In 2004, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos instructed the company's employees to build the world's best e-reader before Amazon's competitors could. Amazon originally used the codename Fiona for the device. Branding consultants Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma devised the Kindle name. Lab126 asked them to name the product, and they suggested "kindle", meaning to light a fire. They felt this was an apt metaphor for reading and intellectual excitement. Kindle hardware evolved from the original Kindle introduced in 2007 and the Kindle DX (with its larger 9.7" screen) introduced in 2009. The DX remained the only non-6" eink Kindle device until the 2017 introduction of the Oasis 2. The range included early generation devices with a keyboard (Kindle Keyboard), devices with touch-sensitive, lighted, high-resolution screens (Kindle Paperwhite), early generations of a tablet computer with the Kindle app (Kindle Fire), and low-priced devices with a touch-sensitive screen (Kindle 7). However, the Kindle e-reader has often been a narrow-purpose device for reading rather than being multipurpose hardware that might create distractions while reading. Active Content support was introduced in 2010 only to be dropped from new Kindle devices in late 2014. After an initial 3 generations the Kindle Fire tablet branding was changed in 2014 to Amazon Fire, reflecting their wider capabilities as an Android-derived tablet.