Amazon is slowly but surely trying own the eBook market and has done well with its cautious Kindle launch. However, to have the platform universally adopted, there are still a number of short comings and challenges.

Price – It is still $160 overpriced. Not a mass market device just yet.

Book economics – There will be resistance from the publishers – the reach of the platform is not there so they are making it up in volumes

Beyond CDMA – To have a global subscriber base, amazon needs GSM variants quickly

Apple – iReader could blow out Amazon off the market if it doesn’t secure the market quickly

Google – They are getting the content digitized, they have the OS, they have the OEM partnerships, they have the biggest reach available to mankind, they have the analytics, they can deliver a knock-out blow

Amazon IMHO is making the classic market-reach miscalculation. They should go aggressive in seeding the market with the device and make money on the downloads. The bigger reach will enable them to experiment with some really interesting advertising business models as well.