No Kindle stocking stuffers this year

It was just a few weeks ago that Oprah touted Amazon.com's e-book reader, the Kindle, on her talk show -- giving the device a huge boost ahead of the holiday shopping season.

Now it seems the Oprah effect worked a little too well. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Kindle is out of stock, and more won't be available until mid-February at the earliest.

It's the second time in a row that Amazon has run out of Kindle during the holidays.

What gives?

The Journal points to Oprah's broad influence on consumer tastes, and also notes that surging demand for the $359 Kindle shows that e-book readers -- once greeted with skepticism -- have finally arrived.

There may be other factors at work.

Amazon originally planned to release the next version of the Kindle in October, ahead of the holiday shopping season, but pushed that back to the first quarter of 2009, according to a recent report in TechCrunch.

About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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