Amazon’s electronic reading device, The Kindle, has been chosen by The Economist for the consumer product innovation award.
The award ceremony, the magazine’s 10th, will be held October 20th in London. It will honor both Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Lab126 president Gregg Zehr, who runs the unit that produces the Kindle.
The editors of the magazine wrote:
“Jeff Bezos and Gregg Zehr turned an obscure product category into a huge new industry with their innovations in business model and hardware design. E-books now outsell paperbacks in America, and the Kindle accounted for 40% of e-readers sold in 2010. They are worthy recipients of our consumer-product innovation award.”
Past recipients of the award include Apple’s Steve Jobs; YouTube’s Steve Chen and Chad Hurley; and Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto.
