Kindle may yet come to New Zealand

Vodafone has revealed that it is in "deep discussions" with Amazon.com to bring the Kindle e-reader to New Zealand.

On Wednesday Amazon announced plans to sell the Kindle globally after reaching an agreement with US telco AT&T, but 60 countries, including New Zealand, Canada and China, were not on the initial international distribution list.

The Kindle is designed to work with the popular 3G GSM standard and allows users to download and read more than 200,000 books and dozens of newspapers and magazines in electronic form through Amazon.com. But users can only access the books if a telecommunications provider owns the wireless coverage rights for the device in their country.

Vodafone New Zealand spokesperson Paul Brislen said today that the e-reader market was "an interesting market" and Vodafone was currently in negotiations with Amazon to win the rights for New Zealand.

"We are in deep discussions with Amazon... with the iPhone you can already download books, but Amazon has the [eBook] market share."

Brislen would not speculate on how likely a deal between Amazon and Vodafone was, or when any potential deal might be struck. He was unsure of whether any other telecommunications providers were also in negotiation with Amazon on the Kindle.

Telecom spokesperson Rebecca Earl would not confirm whether Telecom had contacted Amazon about bringing the Kindle to New Zealand, but said the company could "see the appeal of the Kindle" and was looking at its options for "a device of this type".

Other e-readers currently available overseas include the Sony Reader, which is sold in North America, Britain and some European countries.