Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
I seriously doubt that anyone is losing money on ereaders. As consumer electronics go, these thing have one of the highest margins around. When Asus and Acer can build full on netbooks and make a profit at $300 each, how can anyone not be making a ton of money selling ereaders with no keyboard (to speak of), no hard drive, a processor that's whimpy even by cell phone standards, a tiny battery, an open source OS, etc. for two or three hundred dollars? Build cost for these things can't be over about fifty bucks.
Why do you think everyone's jumping on the band wagon? The margins these things draw can only be dreamed of in any other niche of the consumer electronics arena.
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Perhaps you're too young to remember when the HP-35 calculator first came out at $395. It had very limited storage and no programability but it was the only hand-held, scientific calculator on the market and was probably did not have much of a markup. It was new technology, just like e-ink screens are today.
Now you can purchase a programable scientific calculator for about $20. Eventually ebook readers will also be greatly reduced in price as technological advances are made.