Quote:
Originally Posted by Sregener
Only if the price for Prime Membership were to increase dramatically. And if people wouldn't root the device so they could use Google Play. I can see a lot of people signing up for a year of Prime to get the device and then never buying anything from Amazon, just so they could get the tablet.
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The amount of people that root these devices is grossly overstated.
The vast majority of buyers use them as is and don't even pay to remove the ads. (Most actually *like* them. Go figure.
)
That said, I do agree that "Free" FIREs are unlikely but only because the things have too many uses that don't lead to sales. Plus the psychology of subscription services I referenced above: Amazon wants people to *use* the product. Free hardware can end up in a drawer unused.
Selling FIREs at low profit to harvest the added content revenue makes sense because the hardware pays for itself. Any content sales are pure profit.
Expecting the content to pay for expensive hardware is much dodgier. Look at the : there are 10-12M Prime subscribers so giving out even cheap sub-$100 tablets would cost north of a billion. You'd need to sell a lot of content to pay for that. Content that you might sell without giving out the free hardware.
Bezos is tricky, not crazy.
(On the other hand, I could see Amazon giving Prime subscribers Free STB boxes. Those are cheaper to build.
