Quote:
Originally Posted by Shad Plante
It isn't a coincidence that changing to 8 GB standard with a 32 GB option coincided with a unit capable of playing audiobooks with how much larger those files can be. It is being offered for people who listen to lots of audiobooks, not because they are responding to customers wanting more storage for plain ebooks.
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I think smartphones are in the hands of over 75% of people in the USA. These are far more capable with audiobooks. I don’t think many people were asking for the ability to play audiobooks on their Kindles, especially when it does not support ‘immersion reading’. It is more about marketing audiobooks to heavy (not necessary fat) and perhaps affluent readers (Kindle Oasis owners).
I agree they needed to bump up to 8GB storage just to make this story more plausible, but flash memory is very cheap these days so it doesn’t cut into profit margins much, on a $249 device. And it is a twofer: there are people who want more storage just so they can carry their entire library with them (never mind that it represents many reading-years to consume), or they read lots of manga or prefer more storage just in case they might need it in the future. More selling points.
I can imagine too that they want to add VoiceView support for non-English languages. That takes a little storage as well, though the voice files don’t necessarily need to all be on device.
This is all OT though.
Back OT: it seems to me that objections to KFX have mostly to do with the inconvenience it causes for format-shifting and the idea that Amazon is imposing DRM by other means.
I very much like it for the improved and more consistent reading experience it confers between books and across platforms. FINALLY. It is ‘sausage’, and I don’t care how it is done. When I want to format-shift it is easy enough to get KF8 bits to work with. And it seems this will be the case for the foreseeable future.