The long-waited e-commerce giant has finally arrived on the shores of Australia – www.amazon.com.au, just in time for the peak season of online Christmas shopping.
What’s available so far are Kindle hardware devices and e-books. Very limited product selection at the moment but I would imagine this would change over time, especially throughout 2014.
The Kindle e-readers (such as the Paperwhite) it seems is only sold through Amazon’s partnered local retailers such as Dick Smith and Big W. It seems Amazon AU isn’t able to handle shipping physical products yet as you will still need to shop via the US site. It explains why they’ve launched with a strong focus on digital goods only.
With the current launch, local booksellers will face strong competition from a company that found it’s roots upon – books.
It’s reported that Amazon will not be geo-blocking Australian consumers from visiting and transacting on the US site, so it’d be interesting to see how the prices of Australian goods stack up against US goods, inclusive of all shipping costs.