Apple has produly announced that it has sold over 300,000 iPads on it's first day of release in the US. The iPad was revealed to the world back in Janurary after months if not years of speculation that Apple would be releasing a tablet like computing device.

The initial success of the iPad comes after an ongoing and hyped up ad campaign by Apple. The 300,000 iPads sold so far include all those that were pre-ordered on the Apple site and through channel partners. It is not clear where the most of the sales came from, but it's a good bet that Apple stores across America have been inundated with consumers wanting to get their hands on Apple's latest offering.

In addition to shifting so many iPads, Apple can also celebrate the sale of content for the device too. Over one million Apps and over 250,000 eBooks were purchased from the App Store and iBookstore respectively, making launch day for the iPad an overwhelming success for Apple.

Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO said "It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world—it’s going to be a game changer, iPad users, on average, downloaded more than three apps and close to one book within hours of unpacking their new iPad."

There is no doubt that the first few days of the iPad being out in the wild have been a good one for Apple. However competition for the iPad could quickly heat up with several promising devices planned for release soon. These include devices that run Google Android and have access to the Android market place.

Last month Apple revealed it was to bring a touch device to market which they strongly believe will offer something better than a smartphone, netbook or a laptop. It's a device to fill the voids that those devices leave in the user experience, at least that's what Apple believe. The device is something that fits between the formats. In reality the iPad is for all intents and purposes a very large iPhone without the phone features.

Today the Apple store has been updated and is now accepting pre-orders for Apple's latest and greatest. As mentioned in our previous article there are two models available both with three storage capacities on offer. Prices for the WiFi only model are, $499(16GB), $599(32GB) and $699(64GB). This model will be delivered on April 3rd, a Saturday.

The WiFi+3G enabled model costs, $629(16GB), $729(32GB) and $829(64GB) respectively. To access content via 3G will cost $14.99 per month for up to 250MB of usage or you can fork out $29.99 per month to have "unlimited" access to AT&T's network.

The 3G devices won't ship until the end of April. Orders are limited to two per person, such is demand and delivery is free. You can also reserve one at any Apple retail store for pick up on April 3rd.

All models will be available to customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Will you be buying an iPad, or can't you see anything in them. Let us know your thoughts below.

Back in October 2009 Amazon released it's popular Kindle e-book reader to the world. At the time it only offered the Kindle 2 and not it's larger sibling the Kindle DX. With 2010 looking set to be a busy year for e-book readers with the likes of Skiff, iriver and Logic One to name but a few all announcing e-book readers at CES it would seem that Amazon maybe bracing them selves for a tough year in the e-book industry after previously dominating it.

In response to this the world's largest online retailer has announced that it's going to be extending the availability of the Kindle DX to a worldwide audience, including the UK. The US has had the luxury of the 9.7 inch Kindle DX since May 2009 but with competition growing, Amazon knows it has to offer it's flagship Kindle product to the masses, which is probably one of the main reasons why at the start of CES it has announced that the Kindle DX will be made available in over 100 countries towards the end of January.

The Kindle DX features a 9.7" auto-rotating screen with 16 levels of grey and enough storage to download up to 3500 e-books compared to the Kindle 2 which caters for up to 1500 e-books. Both devices have native support for PDF files and incorporate a 60 second download times via the devices' 3G connection. The Kindle DX with global wireless is available for pre-order today from Amazon.com and will ship for $489 on January 19th.

Meaningful competition on the horizon?

With CES upon us it looks like the event will mark 2010 as the beginning of the fightback for Kindle's competition. There are many alternatives to the Kindle that are expected to make their way to market this year. With that in mind here are some of the devices we can expect to see at some point in 2010.

iriver Story

iriver is a company that has been around for a while, however the iriver Story is their first venture into the e-book business. The Story has already been launched in the UK, Germany and Korea but from this month iriver will be making the device available to US consumers.

As you can see from the pictures the Story looks very much like the Kindle 2 with its sleek no frills but clean looking design. The device is just under 1cm thick and sports a 6" e-ink display like the Kindle 2 does and is accompanied by a QWERTY keyboard and a battery life of over 100 hours which equates to approximately 9,000 page turns. The current model does not sport Wi-Fi but iriver say that a new model coming in Q2 will have Wi-Fi connectivity.

Other notable features include an office file viewer, mp3 player, voice recorder, personal organizer, memo pad and scheduler. Internal memory stands in at 2GB with the option of inserting an SD card up to 16GB in size. The internal memory will store around 1,600 e-books according to iriver. Supported formats include PDF, PPT, DOC and XLS office files and will play mp3, wma and audio book files.

As far as connections go it has a USB 2 port, headphone jack and a comic viewer mode which will allow the device to display images albeit black and white ones.

Content can be purchased from any store that uses Adobe Digital Edition as its distribution method, including CyberRead.com, FictionWise.com, ebooks.com and RandomHouse.com. As stated the iriver Story is already available in the UK for around £230 but there is no word yet on US pricing, iriver simply state that the device will be "competitively priced" and that they are currently in talks with newspapers, magazines and other publishers to bring more content to the device.

iriver.com (Flash heavy)

Plastic Logic QUE proReader

Plastic Logic are a UK company that are hoping to make a name for them selves this year by offering an e-reader that's aimed at business people as well as your average Joe wanting the next best novel.

As such the device will have support for a range of formats including ePub, TXT, PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as being able to access newspapers, periodicals, ebooks and other file types. What's more the company says that transferring content between your computer or BlackBerry OS 4.5.0 or higher smartphone will be a breeze.

Plastic Logic are also working in partnership with Good Technology a leading provider of collaboration, security and management services to develop QUE Mail and QUE Calender for the device. Both services will provide un-tethered updates from a range of popular internet services all delivered over Wi-Fi or the already overloaded (thanks to the iPhone) AT&T 3G network. These services are not expected until Q3 2010.

Content can be downloaded from the QUE store which is  powered by Barns and Noble. The company states that there are currently over 1 million ebooks on the store ready for use on the QUE.

The device it's self weighs in at about a pound and measures around 8.5"W x 11"H x .25"D. Two models are available for pre-order, a 4GB Wi-Fi only model and an 8GB Wi-Fi and 3G capable device. The 4GB model can hold about 35,000 documents and costs $649 whereas the 8GB model can hold 75,000 documents and comes in at an even more lofty $799. Both models feature the same 10.5-inch shatter proof plastic screen which has a 944 x 1264 pixel display with 8 levels of grey.

PlasticLogic.com

Skiff Reader

Of the devices presented here the Skiff Reader brings something a little different to the table. Firstly it features the largest e-ink display, standing in at 11.5" with a generous display resolution of 1200 x 1600 pixels. The screen is also fully touch sensitive and can be flexed as it does not use any glass. Skiff point out that their Reader device is the first to feature Metal Foil e-paper, a technology developed by LG. Metal Foil e-paper is said to be more durable than glass as it has a natural tendency to be flexed or warped.

Content can be purchased through the Skiff store and the company has signed a long term agreement with Sprint to provide 3G access to that store from anywhere you can get a Sprint 3G signal. The device also has Wi-Fi connectivity and the battery should be good for about a week of average reading, not bad for such a large, thin device.

The device will be available later in the year according to Skiff and can be purchased from over 1000 Sprint retail stores across the U.S and online at sprint.com. No wording on pricing or availability outside of the U.S has been provided as of yet.

Skiff.com

Yesterday Amazon released new firmware for their ever popular ebook reader, the Kindle. After six months of improvements and testing, Amazon say that the new firmware sees the Kindle 2 and DX models receiving a staggering 85 percent improvement in battery life.

In real terms this means that the Kindle can now last for up to seven days without requiring a recharge when the devices wireless features are turned on - an improvement of three days more Kindle reading. Battery life with the wireless features turned off should still last for up to two weeks; no change.

The firmware will also see the 6 inch Kindle 2 and DX receiving native support for PDF files. Meaning you can upload your own personal PDF files to the Kindle and read them. Previously the Kindle required that you convert the PDFs to Kindles own format. The problem though is that the Kindle lacks the ability to zoom in on PDF files, making most of them unreadable according to Engadget.

To read PDFs in their native format, Kindle users will have to email the PDFs to their Kindle email address or upload them to the device via USB.

Amazon have stated that previous purchasers of the newer Kindle will receive the firmware update via the Kindle's Whispernet wireless service automatically. Native PDF support will also be available for some of the earlier Kindle models, when it becomes available.

At the start of the month we reported that Amazon was in all likely hood, going to announce that their popular Kindle e-book reader would soon be launching here in the UK. Well, as expected by many, Amazon have today announced that the Kindle is now available world wide including here in the UK. They also announced that the price of the Kindle 2 in the US would fall $40 to $259.

The announcement was welcomed by Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos who said "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". He went on to say "We have millions of customers in countries all over the world who read English-language books, Kindle enables these customers to think of a book and download it wirelessly in less than 60 seconds".

If you go to amazon.co.uk you will (at the time of writing) be presented with an announcement on the front page. Clicking the announcement will take you to amazon.com where you can pre-order the international version of the Kindle 2 for $279, despatch won't be until October 19th however. It seems that for the moment Amazon are shipping the Kindle over from the US rather than making it directly available from it's international based fulfilment centres.

It would also appear that only the Kindle 2 is currently available for international delivery as the product description does not indicate that the Kindle DX will work with wireless networks outside of the US. This is probably just a formality for now. 

Kindle's content delivery system uses cellular networks to download new content to the device instead of WiFi. This means that almost anywhere a cell or mobile phone works, the kindle should work too and with it using the cellular network you won't have to hunt around for a WiFi access point. In Europe there were technical and no doubt administrative issues with the wireless delivery system that Kindle uses. These issues had to be addressed before Amazon could offer it to European countries.

With this announcement comes a new opportunity for Amazon to introduce the Kindle to a new customer base, that will have access to and be able to purchase over 200,000 English-language books, newspapers, magazines, blogs and other journals through the Kindle store. The Kindle store can be accessed for free using the same 3G networks that cell/mobile phones use. However unlike a cell or mobile phone, there is no monthly data-plan or monthly bill to worry about, which means you can access the Kindle store any time for free, purchase the next best seller and then download it to your Kindle for free.

According to The Times, Amazon will soon (as early as this month) launch the Kindle e-book reader in the UK. Amazon are thought to be preparing an announcement for the device for next week. For many this announcement won't come as any surprise as Amazon have previously stated that they wish to release the Kindle outside of the USA.

One of the reasons for the delay in launching the Kindle in the UK was because of the Kindle's Whispernet wireless download system. This system allows consumers to download new content directly to their Kindle from almost anywhere a cell or mobile phone will work. 

In Europe however this system has been experiencing technical difficulties, and according to The Times Amazon had to sort out the issue of roaming charges across Europe. An Amazon.com source though has said that "The key things they needed to tie up have been tied up", so as stated we could see the Kindle coming to EU regions very soon.

UK pricing for the Kindle is still unknown but when you convert the prices of the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX to pounds you get figures of £187 and £299 respectively. Garnish those figures with the typical UK tax and the figures could go several tens of pounds higher.