Amazon Needs To Show Me A $99 Kindle

[Connallmac]

I'm surprised that no one has made this point yet, but in your original post you talk about the $99 iPhone. Well that $99 iPhone has free Kindle software available for it, so for $0 you can begin downloading Amazon's ebook. That is part of the reason that Amazon hasn't seen bigger drops in it's Kindle pricing, it has given you millions of other ways to buy it's books that have no upfront costs. Everyone with a Blackberry or iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch or Android device can buy books from them. They will be happy to sell Kindles all day long, but their main motivation has been to own the ebook market for the long term. That's part of the reason that they stopped with only two base models of Kindle, they aren't going to go after every niche with an expensive piece of hardware, let other manufacturers do the heavy lifting for them, they'll be more than happy to keep selling you books!

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Neither. I don't have a Jetbook, and have no idea how it behaves.

Not being able to read them outdoors is a common complaint about devices that don't use eInk, but not all non-eInk devices have that drawback.
______
Dennis

Jetbook and related devices are reflective LCD. They do not display in color, and they are every bit as daylight-readable as EPDs are. Sadly, this has been stated many, many times around these fora, but the misconception will not die.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

As to its effect on reading habits, having the convenience of being able to pick up this
reader, at any time and resume reading right where I left off, makes any idle time much
more interesting. The fact that most any ebook can be purchased easily over the internet, from home and from a number of sources, means there is no lack of reading
choices. Having the huge number of older "free" ebooks available also makes catching
up on material I've always intended to get around to reading, all the more likely to be
read.

The perfect "occasional reader" is the one that you always have with you, and for me, that's my iPhone.

What's even better is, with its 3G connection, it synchronizes its current reading position with my main reader, my iPad, so when I open the book on the iPhone it's automatically at the point I stopped reading on the iPad.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

But battery life would be an issue, likewise reading outdoors...
______
Dennis

Dennis, reading outdoors is not an issue with a TFT screen.

All of the posters on the jetBook forum are content with the TFT battery life. True, it is not as good as the eInk's battery life, but nobody minds the need to charge once every one to two weeks.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Dennis, reading outdoors is not an issue with a TFT screen.

All of the posters on the jetBook forum are content with the TFT battery life. True, it is not as good as the eInk's battery life, but nobody minds the need to charge once every one to two weeks.

Don't generalize all TFT. It's even worse than generalizing LCD.
EPDs are built on TFTs, as are pretty much all color/backlit LCDs.

The letters TFT in the jetBook are nothing special or different. The word reflective is.

[kjk]

If Amazon showed me a Kindle DX with over 200 dpi and zero screen flash on page turns-I'd pay $599.

[Fbone]

I'd rather exist 3 or 4 healthy supportive ereader companies than have a dozen unstable ones.

[SensualPoet]

The OP states:

Originally Posted by Kris777

Show me a $99 Kindle, Mr. Bezos, and you'll get me and a few million more customers to reach for our wallets.

... but not everyone agrees.

Originally Posted by stargazertony

I disagree. Amazon, nor anyone else, doesn't need to show anybody a $99 reader ... E-readers are kind of a niche market. Not everyone is going to want or buy one.

Exactly ... $189 for the full value Kindle 2i brings to the market is low enough given its full 3G access / delivery, 6" e-ink screen, outstanding content, and the substantial, but niche, nature of this consumer market.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

While a $99 Kindle is theoretically possible, the negative effects to competition might stir up regulatory issues (especially in already-hostile Europe) that Amazon wouldn't want to deal.

... The next big development for Kindle, and probably the reason for a WiFi Kindle to appear, is that Kindle is going to have to move into B&M retail sales.

Regulatory issues no doubt are important in the board-room when these decisions -- lowering prices and significantly narrowing margins. Governments are more interventionist these days than they used to be. Many governments recently, effectively, took partial control of the entire banking system.

But how deeply into B&M does Kindle actually have to go? For all the reasons fjtorres in his full note suggsts -- there are economic costs and consequences to selling online AND in outlets like Best Buy or Wal-mart at the same time. Amazon is NOT in the CE business ... its goal is to be the number one destination for ongoing content sales and the Kindle, as a device, is only one venue to those purchasing dollars. Longer term, selling Kindles has to be a profitable business in its own right (which, if you look at Amazon's business model to date, is EXACTLY how Amazon has positioned it -- as a profit centre, not a loss leader).

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

For Amazon, it's not about the reader, it's about the books. Amazon was already the largest catalog retailer of paper books. eBooks are a logical extension.

Right! plus e-books reduce handling and delivery costs to close to zero (unlike paperbacks and hard covers which need physical warehouses, people to pick them off shevles and box them, and other folks and costs to deliver them ... and then reverse everything, at the same cost, for a return). It is absolutely about the books -- and this important distinction separates Amazon from Sony and Apple, and most other players.

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Hmm... you guys are aware that there has been a nice 5-inch, pocketable, multi-format, DRM supporting (eReader/Palm DRM), full sunlight readable, faster page turning (with no flash-to-black), easy 4 AA battery replacement, ebook reader selling at the $99.95 sale/street price point, for some time now? The Ectaco JetBook Lite. As it also has SDHC card support, so an unlimited library in your pocket. It requires no tie in with any particular ebook distributor and no power hungry rf transceivers (WiFi, 3G or Blutooth).

Amazon's visionary stand in this space is the insistence on 3G as part of the core package. WiFi is not nearly as robust or ubiquitous; nor is wifi the road to the future -- 3G, or wireless at any rate, is. There may be room to add wifi to a 3G Kindle, but it would be a huge mistake to remove 3G from any Kindle. Always on, always connected -- this is a core differentiator and only Amazon has put in place a seamless global solution, currently at no extra cost to the consumer.

Originally Posted by Connallmac

Well that $99 iPhone has free Kindle software available for it, so for $0 you can begin downloading Amazon's ebook. That is part of the reason that Amazon hasn't seen bigger drops in it's Kindle pricing, it has given you millions of other ways to buy it's books that have no upfront costs. Everyone with a Blackberry or iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch or Android device can buy books from them.

This is the second part of Amazon's visionary stand: Amazon delivered content, delivered everywhere, with the same piece of content synced so no matter where you are or one what device, your page picks up where you left off. That's an amazing promise and no other vendor makes that or can make that in the near term.

Originally Posted by kjk

If Amazon showed me a Kindle DX with over 200 dpi and zero screen flash on page turns-I'd pay $599.

This is a niche market Amazon is unlikely to pursue!

So what's next? Some sort of colour device, when the technology catches up with consumer desire. But you can bet it will offer even deeper hooks into Amazon's 3G enabled consumer community and continue to internationalise its base.

[Ken Maltby]

And you see this as a good thing?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

Always on, always connected -- this is a core differentiator and only Amazon has put in place a seamless global solution, currently at no extra cost to the consumer.

So what's next? Some sort of colour device, when the technology catches up with consumer desire. But you can bet it will offer even deeper hooks into Amazon's 3G enabled consumer community and continue to internationalise its base.

Well put. On both counts.

The *no-recurring* cost aspect of Kindle is one of its competitive advantages. Instant gratification is a big sales driver.

And the idea that Kindle will increase its social reading aspects is right on target. Firmware 2.5x has taken some eary steps into implementing reading circles on Kindle and we will more likely see more.

Also, today I saw a commentary suggesting that Facebook's "like" tagging feature might pose a major threat to Amazon's core retailing advantage (for all products they carry) and my first reaction was: "true, maybe Amazon should buy Facebook".

At minimum, I see serious potential for Facebook integration into Kindle or at least facebook-style user pages where users can interact with friends and family and review/comment on/recommend books for each other. (Online reading circles.) This will bring in the kind of Network effects that XBOX Live (for example) brings to XBOX, where people buy XBOX because their friends are on XBOX and Live lets them play with them, not rowdy/offensive strangers.

Amazon obviously sees similar potential for Whispernet so I agree, we'll see more of this. Of course, these kinds of features position Kindle as a "premium" reading device rather than a generic budget reader so its another reason they might not want to do a stripped down Kindle even if they could.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

And you see this as a good thing?

Could you clarify? Which aspect do you question?

(For the record: I own a Kindle and a PB360 and I have three cousins that have JBL's on my recommendation. I'm just curious.)

[Ken Maltby]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Could you clarify? Which aspect do you question?

(For the record: I own a Kindle and a PB360 and I have three cousins that have JBL's on my recommendation. I'm just curious.)

It makes me a little nervous to consider a market leader expanding its efforts
to lockin/capture the means of distribution for a large market segment.

Apple's approach is just as bad, but they will face more competition.

Still, it would be interesting to hear how my concerns are unjustified.

Luck;
Ken

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Still, it would be interesting to hear how my concerns are unjustified.

Luck;
Ken

They may not be unjustified.

But I think too many people are making too many assumptions about Amazon's "market domination". (Last year all the talk was about how Amazon was going to usurp control of the publishing industry from the BPHs. Don't hear much about that after the Price-Fix Five made their move, do we?)

Six months ago, Nook was nothing; a me-too product few could get their hands on, getting mediocre-to-poor reviews. Today B&N has Amazon *reacting* to *their* product introduction. Next week? Who knows?

I think it is very early in the mainstreaming of ebooks.
Amazon has the first-mover advantage (thanks to Oprah) that everybody looks to their product as a benchmark and assumes that they will continue to lead. History says they are as likely to fade (Palm Pilots, Apple II, IBM PC, Mosaic, Lotus, Word Perfect, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Aldus, Ventura, etc...) as they are to prosper.

I also think that ebook reading is, ultimately, a feature and *not* a product. That is in line with *both* the multi-function gadget crowd (iPxx supporters, particularly) and the optimized device supporters. In my view one size does not fit all and there is room for reading ebooks both on low-cost optimized devices (whether eink or LCD is for the market to decide, not me) as well as premium reading devices like Kindle, Nook, Sony 900, and Kindle DX and the Entourage. Again, I want to see the market make its choices, not governments, standards bodies, or mobs with torches and pitchforks.

I want Amazon to make the best Kindle they can conceive as much as I want Pocketbook to make the best readers *they* can. If it means the iCoolers and iRexes of the world have to fold, so be it. Because if the market is big enough to matter, new players (ahem; Apple, Samsung, Asus, etc) will want a piece of the pie.

I'm not ready to ascribe monopoly status to anybody until they actually acquire a proven monopoly. And *then* I'll worry about whether it is good or not. To date, the only barriers to entry Amazon has erected in ebooks are by making their product better in some ways. (It is also inferior in others, which means there is room for competitors that understand user needs and can execute.) Their pricing has hardly been predatory if, as reported the Kindle that used to sell for as much as $359 at introduction cost $189 to build. 100% markup--very Apple-ish, actually--is hardly low-balling anything.

From my point of view, Amazon's only demonstrable "crime" is refusing to roll over and play dead for Adobe. (Which Apple also refused to do. Funny how little noise there is over them "splintering" the ePub market.) In my view, lock-in to Adobe DRM (or Apple's) is no different than lock-in to Amazon's. Except Amazon DRM is supported on more devices of more different types than anybody else.

Now all this is just *me*.
I favor Darwinian product competition; variation, speciation, survival of the fittest...
I favor equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.
I want products (and people and nations) to be the best they can be and I see no reason to artificially hamstring them to favor those unwilling or incapable of keeping up.
I don't fear the future; rather I'm a big fan of sitting back and waiting to see what happens before worrying about disasters to come.
Again, that's just me.
Others can feel different.
Sooner or later we'll see how it plays out.

Maybe in two years the ebook reader market will be Amazon and the seven dwarves. Or maybe in two years Amazon will be out of the reader hardware business altogether. It can be (and has been) plausibly argued either way.

All we know for sure is that tomorrow's ebook reader will look nothing like today's.

I'd prefer it if we could give these companies---all of them, big and small---room and incentive to go and build the best products they can. And then we can vote with our pocketbooks. (Ahem.) Make that wallets.

Let them win or lose in the marketplace on their own merits.

Fair'nough?
$0.02

[foreverjuly]

I've heard people guessing that ereaders will drop to $99 by Christmas. I'd love to see it, but I guess we'll have to see. The iPad has put a huge amount of downward pressure on price, though I find it a stretch to argue people think they want a kindle then decide to drop double for an iPad.

I agree with FBone that a handful of effective companies are better, and I'm sure that's all the market will bear after a while. Don't forget about the nook too, which is supposedly a hefty competitor. I've never touched one, but I know some people who swear by them.

Ultimately, more options and more competition leads to benefits for consumers!

[luqmaninbmore]

Refurb Kindles with US only wireless are now only $109 from direct from Amazon. So we're pretty close to $99.