Amazon Needs To Show Me A $99 Kindle

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

DRM is *not* the reason Amazon is unlikely to do an unconnected reader; the reasons are economic (Kindle is a storefront first, a reader second) and strategic (social networking via Kindle is clearly part of Aazon's longer-term strategy for selling Kindle and ebooks) and a wireless-free Kindle would be dependent on PC access to buy books (killing the "built-in storefront" aspect) and would lack the real-time sync and networking features.

Yes! Amazon is the world's largest catalog retailer, and a critical function of the Kindle is access to the catalog. The fact that you can browse the catalog and purchase through the Kindle is at least as important as the fact that you can then read what you bought.

Wireless connectivity is not indispensable but it *is* a key component of what a Kindle is. Given the minimal cost add-in from at least WiFi (under $10), it seems unlikely Amazon will give up connectivity on a Kindle reader any time soon.

Yep. As features become commodities, chipsets arise to support them. Broadcom is probably the leading vendor of such things for Wifi, and adding the capability to a device with a Broadcom chipset is a very low cost solution.
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Dennis