NEW YORK (Dow Jones) - Amazon.com on Monday unveiled a slimmer, lighter version of the Kindle, its electronic book reader, with a host of new features but the same price point as the original device.
At a press conference in New York, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos demonstrated the new device, which will be available for shipping on Feb. 24. Dubbed the Kindle 2, the device is thinner than the popular 3G iPhone and can hold more than 1,500 books. The company also said it has extended the battery life of the product by 25% from the original version.
The new device comes barely a year after Amazon launched the original Kindle, which has been sold out for much of that time. The company has never disclosed specific sales figures for the device, though analysts guess that as many as 500,000 units of the device have been bought.
"We've been selling ebooks for years, and guess what? It didn't work, until fourteen months ago," Bezos said at the event.
The Kindle, originally launched in December 2007, is the first reading device that allows customers to buy and download books without a connection to a computer. The goal of the nation's largest Internet retailer is to use the Kindle to remake the book market for the digital age.
The new version of the device is just 0.36 inches thick and weighs just over 10 ounces. The device offers 2GB of memory capacity that Amazon says will hold more than 1,500 books compared with just 200 books for the original version.
The extended battery life will allow Kindle 2 users to read for 4-5 days on a single charge if the device's wireless service is turned on.
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