Quote:
Originally Posted by djk80
I just bought a new K3 and I am just wondering if you guys know anything new about future kindles coming out ?
I know Amazon is already planning to come out with a touchscreen version possibly sometime in the future. They bought a touchscreen company a couple months ago ::
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...e_project.html
So I am sure they are working with that technology to incorporate into their newer kindles. But does anyone have any other information or rumors of things to come ? |
Who cares? You've got yours now, are you going to send it back for something that
might be available in 6 or 9 or 12 months? They've just released this model - they're not going to replace it tomorrow. With all technology purchases, there will always be something better coming along in the future; you've just got to buy based on what you need - and what you're going to use - right now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by djk80
Or even price drops ??
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Price drops are pretty heavily rumoured for Christmas - I'm sure I've seen more than one tech blog speculate with this conclusion, although I admit I can't find any of those by googling right now. I think some industry analyst has done a breakdown of the manufacturing costs based on the wholesale pricing of chips and the e-inks screens and has assessed that there's room for a price drop.
However it's more to the point that Amazon want to be market-leader in ereader devices right now - in June B&N dropped the price of its Nook and within hours Amazon responded with a $70 price-slash, making the Kindle $10 cheaper. I believe that Amazon cut Kindle prices for Christmas last year, and so I wouldn't be surprised if they cut them again this year.
Having said that, I think the current price of $139 is fantastic. I wish they sold it that cheaply in the UK. The speculation is that the sweet-spot price-point is $99 for mass-market eReader success (i.e. at Christmas), but I don't think it's worth worrying about a $40 saving
maybe in 3 months time. It's still a great bargain at the price it is now, and since you've got one you should just enjoy it. There are readers on this forum who paid $399 for their Kindle the day the first model was released and who report still not regretting it at all - the current model may be cheaper, but they've enjoyed 2 years' use out of theirs!
Quote:
Originally Posted by djk80
I don't know about you guys but the price difference between the kindle DX and the wifi k3 is enormous. I can buy literally two wifi k3's and it will still be cheaper then a Kindle DX only for a couple inches bigger on the screen? I wanted to Kindle DX pretty bad though and almost bought it anyways but I'll probably stick to a regular k3 until the dx price drops or comes out with a more noticeable difference then just a bigger screen
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The DX is a premium model. Amazon don't mind taking a loss on each regular Kindle they sell, because it locks buyers into the Amazon-Kindle ecosystem and they'll make the money back on book sales. Obviously we don't know
how much Amazon are prepared to lose on each Kindle sale, but I'll bet there are people here on this forum who have spent $1500 on ebooks - it probably only takes one purchase a week over 2 years to spend that much.
It's a paperback Kindle that the mass-market wants, and it's the mass-market that drives competitive pricing. Amazon probably sell 10, 20 or even more regular-sized Kindle for each DX they sell, and when you sell more of something then your per-unit cost decreases. Someone else has pointed out that the DX's screen is twice the size of the regular Kindle, but that probably means the screen costs
more than twice as much to produce - manufacturing flaws, based on a figure / cm² - will mean that more DX screens will be affected per batch, and a higher yield of the smaller screens.
The regular sized Kindle doesn't only have to compete against the Nook, but it has to compete against the whole concept itself of paperback books. Amazon are prepared to slash prices to achieve that. They want the Kindle to drive buyers to their online store the way the iPod has driven music sales from iTunes.
The DX is a "boardroom" device, which will appeal to executives and to academics who really
need the extra size that it offers. That's a completely different market, and although Amazon does have competitors in that field, it's not going to be so cut-throat. I would see the DX more as a way of completing Amazon's product range, rather than a core product itself - I'll bet that someone buying a larger-format reader will typically already have a paperback-sized one, so the appeal of the DX is to say "Amazon offers all sizes" and that one can buy the larger size of eReader and have it synchronise with the user's library on the Kindle they already have.
Amazon want to win the "format war", and it's the regular-sized Kindle that fights that battlefront. A 10% increase in sales of the paperback-sized Kindle is probably more than the entire number of DXs they're shipping. Amazon want a Kindle device in peoples' hands, they want the brand "Kindle" to be synonymous with the whole concept of eReaders, so that people don't think or compare models before buying an eReader - they just buy a Kindle, just as they buy an Apple-brand iPod when they want a music-player. That's not what the DX is about.