Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
But it's never going to be able to sell in retail stores at the $50 level; I can perhaps see it getting down to around $200, but no lower than that. That's determined by the manufacturing cost of the screen, the distribution process, the fact that the manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer all have to make some profit, etc.
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I think you are right. We won't see this thing any lower than $200 dollars any time soon. I do think that how well Sony does with Connect can play a role in the price of the device though. I would look at it much like a cell phone. If Sony is able to sell enough books in the Connect store they may be able to sell the device at a loss and subsidize the loss with book sales. This would be much like taking a loss on a cell phone because they are making enough off of the service.
I think this would be ideal for consumers as I saw that someone commented on the recent
Engadget article that you could buy 30-35 real books for the price of the reader alone. Depending on where you buy your books I guess that may be possible but I think that number would be more like 12-15. That is still a lot of books. I am pretty sure that a lot of people have this mindset as this was actually something that I considered before I got a reader.
I am very happy to see that the devices availability is getting better and I hope this will mean improvements in content that is available for the device at Sony Connect and other places as well.