• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, January 6, 2010

Amazon says it is taking its Kindle DX global, and starting Jan. 19, will ship the $489 wireless device to more than 100 countries.

This Kindle, introduced last spring, is 9.7 inches, and boasts 60-second downloads, easy page-turn buttons, a built-in dictionary, and enough storage room for 3,500 books. But the larger format is intended to appeal not just to book lovers, but to avid newspaper and magazine readers, as well as students. (That's because highly formatted pages, such as textbooks and magazines, work especially well on the larger screen.)

While the battle for e-readers has been heating up for some time, with impressive competition for Kindle coming from both Sony and Barnes & Nobles' Nook eReader this fall, the just-concluded holiday selling period proves the gadgets are catching on in a big way. Just after Christmas, Amazon revealed that Kindle had become the most gifted item ever in Amazon's history, and that on Dec. 25, users bought more Kindle books than real ones. (That's saying something: On Amazon's peak selling day this season, it says it sold 9.5 million items worldwide, or about 110 items per second.)

Forrester Research expects sales of devices in the U.S. to exceed $500 million in 2010, according to a report published last month, and in the first three quarters of 2009, says that sales of ebook content in the U.S. more than doubled.

"There's no question that Amazon is in the lead when it comes to selling eBook content: Forrester estimates that Amazon has a 60% market share of eReader devices in the US, and its share of eBook content sales is likely even higher," the report says.

The Kindle DX -- launched last spring amid criticism that people wanted smaller gadgets, not bigger ones -- has 2.5 times the surface area of its smaller Kindle, as well as built-in PDF reader, to ease wireless reception of personal and professional documents, and can be read without lots of scrolling and zooming. Text size is adjustable, and it offers an experimental read-to-me feature, which converts text to spoken word -- giving users the option to read or listen, and switch back and forth, without losing their place.

But Forrester is quick to point out that e-reading will evolve around what people read, not the gizmos they use. "Consumers are used to getting books from multiple sources -- online, local bookstores, mass-market retailers, grocery stores, airports, libraries, friends -- and once they possess them, they consume them in the same way regardless of origin. Similarly, with digital books, there's the opportunity for other retailers and content providers to also serve the eBook consumer -- not just with à la carte sales but also potentially with subscriptions and free ad-supported content as well."