Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
The question is ... why don't they sell the 32 GB Paperwhite in the U.S.? I would be tempted to say because they want to drive business to the 32 GB Oasis but, unless I'm wrong, the Manga was out long before the 32 GB Oasis. Meanwhile the Kindle line has one more member in Japan than in the U.S. (Also interesting, to me, is that there is no 3G option for the Manga.)
|
Well, it's a Japan-only model. It's not like it's officially available in any other country and not just US.
I remember reading somewhere that one volume of
One Piece sells like 6-8 million copies in Japan. Amazon's devices are really more a means to a goal - sell more Kindle books, get more Prime/Kindle Unlimited subscribers, etc. Viewed from that perspective, it makes sense that they'll want an inexpensive device targeted to manga readers in Japan.
Maybe Amazon doesn't expect a lot of e-ink manga readers in the US? Most US readers are also used to bigger books. I think American comics are typically 6.75" x 10". Even the smaller Tokyopop trim commonly used for manga is bigger than the typical Japanese tankobon. And given the prevalence of free pirated/unofficial manga scanlations, I think physical is the preferred format for actual manga buyers.
Iirc, someone (maybe HarryT?) did a test on a 32GB Oasis 2 and mentioned indexing greatly suffers somewhere past 5,000 books so keeping storage low on less expensive Kindles probably makes sense from a CPU perspective, too.
As for 3G, regular ebooks are what, typically less than 1MB to ~3MB? At 40MB for just one manga volume (maybe a 15 minute read), it's probably not practical to offer lifetime free 3G data for Amazon-purchased manga.