Amazon Profits Skyrocket

It seems that Amazon has been living it up, thanks in no small part to massive sales of its Kindle ebook reader over the Christmas block.

Amazon seems to have KINDLED a virtual book market... please, shoot me.

According to Cnet, Amazon has had a very fine year indeed, with revenue up to $9.52 billion, a fairly staggering increase on last year, to the tune of 42%. Indeed, reports also indicate that Amazon has seen profits rise by around the 70% mark, which is nothing to be sneezed at. Apparently, the fourth quarter of last year (which happily enough includes both Christmas and the US’s Black Friday sales) was the most profitable quarter the company has ever seen.

YouTube to Offer Rentals

YouTube is stepping out into the online movie rental business, with its latest move to offer video independent movies through its web-based services.

According to a posting to the YouTube blog, the service is pleased to be able to offer something that’ll make a little money for independent filmmakers, who have long been its bread and butter. Indeed, the folks at YouTube seem to acknowledge the extent to which the two have been reliant on one another, with indie filmmakers pulling in users for YouTube and YouTube directing traffic at those filmmakers. It’s an interesting ecosystem.

Prey Sold Out… on Steam

Thanks to a massive price drop as part of its Christmas sale, Steam has managed, bizarrely, to end up “Sold Out” of 2K Games’ portal-throwing first person shooter, Prey.

Strange stuff...

One of the biggest reasons to opt with digital distribution for games is convenience, not only on the part of the end user, but for the distributor itself. Steam’s model, one would have thought, prevents it from ever having to post a sold out sign, since games should be practically infinitely reproducible. Apparently that’s not the case for 2K Games’ Prey, though so far the reason seems to be a little vague.

Kindle App to Hit BlackBerries?

Amazon has slowly been rolling out Kindle functionality to a range of devices that have nothing to do with its own Kindle hardware except that, with the addition of a dedicated app, they’re capable of being ebook readers.

Last month, Amazon released a Kindle app for Apple’s iPhone and a standalone Kindle desktop app for those of us who’d like to read ebooks from the comfort of our desks. It’s certainly an interesting idea, and one that ensures that Amazon’s customers are more open to the idea of picking up a piece of its own Kindle branded hardware, having already interacted with the hardware.

Author Grants Amazon Exclusive Rights

Well regarded author Stephen Covey has moved to give Amazon exclusive rights to publish the electronic versions of his work from his usual publishers over to Amazon, whose Kindle has been vastly successful as a vehicle for the format.

In its report, the New York Times names Covey as one of the most successful writers of the last twenty years, so it seems fair to say that Covey isn’t angling to easy publicity by being the first author signed exclusively to Amazon, but it’s still going to be a bit of a nasty surprise to book publishers who, until quite recently, haven’t really had too much to fear from the ebook market.

Apple Acquires LaLa.com

Apple has confirmed that it has acquired streaming music service LaLa.com shortly after the company admitted that it was unlikely to reach profitability in the near future, despite having some big players backing it up.

The word that Apple has managed to pick up LaLa (and apparently has managed to do so for a shockingly low sum, if rumours are to be believed) has come as something of a shock, given that the company had essentially been on something of a winning streak. LaLa had, in a month, become the service powering some fairly massive different entries to the web-based music department.

Special Offers – Week of November 23rd

Good afternoon all, hopefully everyone’s had a good weekend and we’re all reasonably well recovered from last week, which was a bit of a nightmare. Anyway, for those of you who don’t read the blog too often, we tend to post our special offers for the week on a Monday afternoon, since it means they’re up for the maximum amount of time.

It gives people a chance to weigh up their options and consider whether or not they’d like to go for something while it’s on special. It’s best for all concerned really 🙂

This week, we’ve got special offers on a portable external drive, a graphics card and a digital photo frame (since nobody buys themselves a digital photo frame, it’s an excellent one to buy as a gift).

WD Passport Studio 320GB:

Western Digital’s Passport remains among the most popular USB-powered portable externals we stock, while it’s bigger brother, the Western Digital Elements, dominates the 1TB external range in a fairly similar fashion.

Click through to see our page for the WD Passport Studio 320GB 🙂

The 320GB Passport Studio is a little different though, in that it boasts Firewire support, which is nothing to be sneezed at. It does mean you’ll be paying a little more for the privilege, but the advantages are fairly plane; Firewire is that bit quicker than USB if you’re doing a big transfer.

While most notebooks (and since it’s a USB-powered external we’ll assume notebook users will be the greater portion of those interested) don’t boast their own Firewire ports, Mac users will likely already be fairly familiar with the standard. Moreover, it supports standard USB 2.0 connections as well, so if you’re an occasional Mac user it’s well worth looking into.

For those Mac users out there considering it, it’s also an ideal home for a Time Machine backup, especially considering the fact that it’s already silver, so it’ll blend in neatly with your existing hardware… which probably isn’t as important when you’re considering a backup as it is to me, but it’s a consideration 😉

All that aside, the WD Passport Studio 320GB is knocked down by 25% this week to €119. Not bad at all.

Media Player Sales to Outdo Blu-Ray This Christmas?

With the Christmas season starting to crank up in earnest (you can tell when the ads start hitting the telly), we’re starting to see an increase in sales of both HD media players and Blu-Ray, but it’s interesting to see how well media players are performing.

Western Digitals Media Player is among the most popular.

This might be a little stinted, because of the fact that a lot of our customers tend to be quite technically minded, but we’re seeing a massive surge in the sales of media players and adaptors (like Western Digitials HDTV Media Player). Certainly they’ve grown to be among our most popular products, especially given the Irish fondness for external storage.