Kindle v. new Nook and pricing

[rcuadro]

Originally Posted by questionfear

Huge...it's totally an F-U to B&N.

[Lawcheehung]

$60 drop no sweat immediately after B+N made their drop, shows how large the margins they were making off these.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by boswd

My best friend has the Kindle and I the Nook, the price advantage the Kindle had before January etc is gone. Barnes and Noble and the Amazon are pretty much priced fairly similiar and basically Apple with their deal ruined it for all us basically but overall you won't find a big price difference between the two.

Also, Amazon is no longer loosing money on most of the ebooks they sell. Under the Agency model, if you can get a reader to buy your reading device you get 30% of every Agency publisher ebook they buy. So it makes sense to discount the reading device to get more customers. That said, I don't think Amazon (or B&N) is loosing money on the devices at these prices. They were making bucket fulls of profit before.

[Mike4672]

Originally Posted by Lawcheehung

$60 drop no sweat immediately after B+N made their drop, shows how large the margins they were making off these.

I think the price drop is actually $70 instead of $60 (From $259 to $189)

[SensualPoet]

I'm not sure I would want to be any other player in the market -- B&N, Kobo and Kindle ... next move ... Sony?

Where does that leave everyone else? Bye-bye Aztak, Cooler, etc etc.

The new entry price is under $200 and comes with text to speech, wifi or 3G, "real" e-book stores .... wow!

[BVLarson]

This is very interesting. We might have superior readers costing less because they lock in customers. Then, for once, the generic machines lose out. People have been predicting the IPad was the death of things like the Kindle, but what it really meant was they are going cheap, cheap, cheap!

[RevRick]

Wouldn't it be funny if Steve Jobs' collusion with the Big 6 or whoever the hell they are served not to kill the Kindle and delay eBooks whilst aging publishing execs deploy golden parachutes but rather the opposite?

A price war on e-ink devices threatens to bring them down to a price point where they become like cell phones -- ubiquitous and the defacto way to read a book. To stretch a (perhaps already over-stretched) analogy, think $19.95 starter phones versus "smart phones" -- there are a lot of folks who just want to talk.

[eboyhan]

Today's price reduction IMO would have happened anyway -- the Barnes and Noble move just accelerated what Amazon was going to do nearer to August. Nevertheless, today's price move creates a huge pricing hole for a putative K3 device.

I expect Amazon to come out with an improved function K3 and also a bargain basement device priced at $149 or lower (probably wifi only). I do not expect the K3 to have color or touch; maybe more memory, audio recording, voice recognition, UI improvements, user customizations, more fonts -- especially for non-western alphabets are all possibilities.

I also would not be overly surprised to see the KDX be discontinued and replaced with new devices specifically targeted at the business and academic/education communities.

[nerys]

I played with a nook. its too small for me and I don't like the LCD (power sink) but I do have the say the eink display on the nook is SUPERIOR to my sony 500 and also superior (in contrast and color only) to my kindle DX. its almost WHITE (light off white like newspaper) and much better contrast.

but its just too tiny and that improvement in color is not enough to replace my PRS500 though I DO like the replaceable battery !!

if they made a competitively priced DX sized reader with that screen. added a keyboard like the kindle and allowed basic web like the kindle on the 3G I would probable switch to the nook just for the memory card and replaceable battery.

[PG4003]

I've been a Kindle owner since January of this year, and I just bought a Nook WiFi about 2 weeks ago. These devices are so similar, and I would recommend either one of them to anybody. Personally, I feel the Kindle is just a better product, so I'm a little biased toward my Kindle. I'm having a hard time adjusting to the touch screen portion of the Nook, it's different. But I love the Nook because I can borrow library books for free from my public library. Both the Kindle and the Nook have features that are better on one device than the other, but overall, as far as my experience goes, I would recommend either one of them. The 3G is not that important to me. I feel like for the $149 I paid for my Nook, I got a good deal (although they will probably be $100 by Christmas!).

ETA: One thing I've noticed is that the Kindle seems to have a tight-knit "community" around their product. Kindle owners (on forums) keep one another updated as far as free books, and tips/troubleshooting items on the Kindle. I participate in a Nook forum but I don't find it to be as much of a community as the Kindle forum. Could possibly be because the Nook hasn't been around as long.

[laurie_lu]

On another Kindle forum, I've been reading how several Kindle owners are buying the Nook for the public library download capability.