Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
I would bet against touch on the low end Kindle for a while.
I think that Amazon wants to postition itself with the low cost EBR vis a vis the other large players in the EBR business. Evidently, their costs for the current low end Kindle are low enough for them to do that. So any NEW low end Kindle will have to be priced as low as the present KwSO. I don't see how adding a touch screen will keep costs down.
On the anticipated high end Kindle(s), I have to believe that you are right - these are going to be touch devices. But I don't see the point in adding page turn buttons to a device that is built around touch, unles their focus groups tell them that a significant proportion of potential customers will not buy the new EBRs without page turn buttons. Reason being that the addition of page turn buttons will add some cost, and will also add another potential point of failure on the device, to merely duplicate the funtion that touch can perform.
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I'm not sure one can say there is a low-end vs high-end Kindle. There's one, and then there's the bigger one. The KSO is the same device with a software alteration. Buttons/Touchscreen/combination thereof is an ergonomics issue, so function redundancy doesn't really come into play if they feel elimination of either/or would alienate some customers. Likely the costs are negligible for both as well, as evidenced by the new Nook's $139.