[NatCh]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

i hope 194 customers is enough to make sony happy! ;+)

I'm sure it's not, but not every Reader owner is a MobileReader, and I was using the MobileReaders who are Reader owners to point out that your conclusion that a dedicated device doesn't "make sense" isn't as clear and inevitable as you were claiming it is.

But you knew that already.

Originally Posted by bowerbird

look, i really believe a $50 machine is a pipedream, and
that continuing to foster this myth is counterproductive.

here's my reasoning...

any dedicated machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

a multi-purpose machine will need:
1. a chip, etc.
2. a screen.
3. an operating system, etc.
4. miscellaneous plastic, etc.
5. marketing, shipping, handling.

given these two(?) lists, i don't see where
the dedicated machine can squeeze costs.

You're leaving out some reduced cost due to a simpler control set (buttons and such), but that's fairly trivial.

In any case, I agree, I don't see any way they can get the cost down enough to make any money on the hardware in the $50 range.

Originally Posted by RWood

From what I have heard (here's another story with only a little, if any backing) the e-ink screen alone costs the manufacturers over $25.

I've been trying to get a bead on this for some time. The best guess (and it's still a guess) is that the 6" screen is somewhere between $150 and $200. The folks over at the Baen Bar have been trying to design their own e-reader. They couldn't say specifically what costs what (due to an NDA with PrimeView) but they did say that if they bought some of the more common parts themselves and did their own assembly, they could get the cost down to around $300 -- I think that was for a lot of 1000 units. I specifically asked the Sony guys what the cost of the displays was when we were at the Blogger's Day thing -- they wouldn't tell me a number, but did venture the opinion that the ~$350 that iRex was quoting to replace their 10" display was not out of line. Like I said, I don't have hard numbers either, but I've been puzzling over this for some time, and have gathered a few data points.

Originally Posted by radleyp

I don't think Amazon needs any subsidy at all. Consider cellphones: dealers will give them to you free, provided you sign up for some service contract.

That kind of is a form of subsidy, radelyp.

Originally Posted by radleyp

Amazon could do exactly the same thing: a free reader with a one-year subscription, say, to their ebook library. The cost of the reader is absorbed into the service contract.

I'd be a bit leery of this sort of thing, speaking for myself. If it costs them even as little as $250 to make the units, then they're going to have to recoup that cost in order to stay in business. They'll also have to not lose money on the content they're "subscribing" you to. I have nightmare visions of a new round of "Columbia Record Club" type things for e-books. I don't want to climb in that particular type of pit if I can help it.

Maybe they can come up with an arrangement that would be fair all around (and I, personally, don't doubt that they'll sure try), but I'd want to read the fine print very carefully before I agreed to it.