Berlin - The Amazon Kindle, the e-book device which has taken the United States by storm, will not be offered in Germany because of excessive wireless network fees, according to a news report Sunday. The launch of the Kindle in Europe's biggest book market had been already been clouded after the publishing industry said it would prevent electronic books being sold at lower prices than their paper counterparts.
The business weekly Wirtschaftswoche quoted an executive saying that Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos had been unable to reach a distribution deal with the main wireless companies in Germany, T-Mobile and Vodafone.
The reader automatically downloads its digital books using the same signals as those for cellular phone calls.
The executive said the phone companies were demanding too much.
The weekly said Amazon's partners in Germany confirmed this was the problem. No release was planned for the moment.
The competing product, the Sony Reader, arrived in Germany three months ago, but users must connect it to a computer every time they need a new book or article.
The convenience of the Kindle, which only works with an Amazon account, has helped it to its enormous success. this month, Amazon released its third-generation Kindle, the DX, in the United States.
Sony's content manager in Germany, Peter Ziesch, urged the book industry to price e-books at a 20-per-cent discount to the paper-book price. But many publishers are insisting on the same price for a book in either form.
Retail book prices in Germany are fixed by law.
