“The drop is virtually the first since the switchover to the international Kindle and is an obvious reaction to the cheaper Nook 3G, which now costs $10 more. Barnes & Noble’s Nook Wi-Fi is still the least expensive with some form of Internet access, at $149,” Electronista reports.
Electronista reports, “Pricing for the 9.7-inch Kindle DX remains the same $489 as it did when the hardware launched more than a year ago.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The bloodbath doth proceed apace.
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$200 for a candle, that’s bullshit.
Does it still come with unlimited free 3G?
Blood for let. Apply Amazon.com
Why would anyone pay $489.00 for a 9.7 inch Kindle when you can get an iPad wifi version for $499.00?
@JH: Because you’re a windoze sufferer and you’re clueless.
Its a Fire Sale!
My hunch is that Amazon will be out of the hardware business within a year, and will shift their strategy to selling books via free Kindle software.
Even with that, Amazon will still do okay. Today, Amazon sells a lot more than books. The idea they have for customers to ‘subscribe’ to scheduled shipments of vitamins and coffee for pod-style coffeemakers is s brilliant example. Even though the Kindle is likely a money-loser, Amazon really makes the money selling electronic books anyway.
Damn! Now I’m only saving $189 by not buying that POS. Oh well, there’s always microsoft.com…
Two turds circling the bowl together in a race to the bottom.
Ouch, well it’s too late, I already bought my parents an iPad. Anyway, the buttons on the Kindle are supposed to be a pain in the ass. You can’t give someone a gift that is annoying and frustrating to use..
History repeats itself.
When PCs and Apples were new in the 1970s and 1980s, there were computers dedicated to word processing. No surprise those companies died off.
The Kindle and the Nook are today’s word processors. Unless they include features of the iPad, they’ll go the way of the word processing computer.
I assume these companies know this, so they’re selling products which will be obsolete soon, or which they will render obsolete through upgrades.
I don’t have an iPad, but that would be my choice.
Amazon is in the business of selling the content (ebooks), not making electronic devices. If they had wanted to corner the ebook market while it was young, they should have designed Kindles so they could be sold break-even at $99 and aggressively pushed ebooks. It’s like razors and printers; you make the profit from selling the “refills,” not the actual device.
Instead, I think Amazon was too afraid of impacting their traditional paper-based book retail business. So they sold the device for a ridiculous price that would intentionally limit sales, hoping for a controllable transition from paper to electrons. Only problem… iPad happened, and now, Amazon has lost control. Apple will dictate how ebooks are adopted going forward.
Amazon still has the Kindle app, so they can take advantage of all those iPads out there and sell ebooks. If it hasn’t happened already, there will soon be more iPads out there than Kindle devices. But Amazon has lost the initiative to Apple in a big way.
Since Amazon no longer needs to make the device, they should cancel the Kindle device and focus on selling ebooks through the Kindle app.
I had a Kindle for a year and a half. I got my money’s worth. I read 80+ books, and they are still in my virtual Amazon stash. But now I am reading everything on my iPad. I am happy with the kindle app on my iPad, and continue to get more books there, but who knows? Amazon has a great selection and it is seamless between my iPhone, Mac and iPad. iBooks is not quite there on the switching contexts. And definitely not in storing the books on the cloud. When Apple stores all of my purchases in the cloud and I can retrieve them anywhere, anytime on a variety of devices, I’ll be sold. Till then Amazon has my book dollars and most of my music dollars. They should give away the Kindle and really enhance their ipad version.
I prefer the Kindle app to Apple’s iBooks app.
max31
I still have a Canon Starwriter boxed and in basement storage; it’s parked close to my IIci and Performa.
$189 is still a lot of money for a trout line anchor.
I prefer the Kindle (app,not the hardware) for lots of reasons. Amazon still carries about every book you’d ever want, and despite they myth, iBooks and Kindle only have a small percentage of all the books published in an electronic format. Like iTunes, I’m sure that will change over time, but I still need some real books. But wouldn’t it be cool some day when my whole bookshelf (that has some obscure books) is on my iPad?