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Amazon slashes price of new Kindle DX

by Sarah Griffiths on 1 July 2010, 11:33

Tags: Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN)

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Re-kindling e-readers?

Amazon has cut the price of its new Kindle DX from $489 to $379 whilst boosting the display contrast by half for clearer text.

The revamped 9.7 inch member of Amazon's Kindle e-reader family now boasts a slick graphite enclosure plus high contrast electronic ink display with 50 percent better contrast for sharper images and text. 

It also retains its 3G wireless with no costly contracts, in a bid to continue its e-reader market stronghold against new pricier competitor Apple, with its successful iPad which sold a staggering 2m units in just 60 days.

As well as a no-glare electronic ink large screen and slim build of just over 1/3 inch, the new Kindle DX has an auto-rotating screen, text to speech reading feature, built-in PDF reader, integration with Twitter and Facebook, plus an impressive battery life of nearly one week with wireless enabled or two weeks with it switched off.

Storing up to 3,500 books or periodicals, Kindle-bought books can be read on multiple devices including a PC, iPhone, Android mobile or BlackBerry, while Amazon's ‘Whispersync' feature saves and sync libraries and the page readers are on.

Barnes & Noble has also recently cut the price of its Nook e-reader from $259 to $199, while Amazon reduced the price of its basic Kindle from $259 to $189 with both companies firmly positioning themselves as cheaper alternatives to Apple's iPad which can function as an e-reader.

Over 620,000 books are available from Amazon's Kindle Store, with bestsellers retailing for under $10. The Kindle Store also allows free downloads of out of copyright pre-1923 books such as titles by Jane Austen and Conan Doyle, with any book delivered wirelessly in under 60 seconds, so Amazon claims.

The new Kindle DX is available for pre-order from today and it ships July 7.

 

HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Posted by Saracen - Thu 01 Jul 2010 11:53
A move in the right direction I suppose, but it begs he question …. if they can afford to do this now, how much were they milking it for at the old price?

Maybe it;s just me, but the appeal of the iPad and the Kindle, for me, are very different. They have different purposes and different advantages and while they;re some overlap, it's akin to not buying a Ferrari if you went to plough the fields, and not buying a tractor if you want to go on race days.

And, despite this price cut, they'd still need to cut the new price in half, then knock a chunk off that before it would interest me.

e-readers may be the way of the future but not, for me at least, at anything like that price. That price cut is far too little, and it may be that it's also too late. Having said that, for me, the iPad is way over-priced too.
Posted by jim - Thu 01 Jul 2010 12:01
It would also be start if they could sell the Kindle in pounds sterling, with shipping from the UK, and sell the books in sterling.

It's ridiculous that they recommend importing it, and then act like that's a perfectly good solution.
Posted by mikerr - Thu 01 Jul 2010 14:14
Yeah, amazon really lost a lot of UK sales by not bothering to launch properly here,
and the time to do this kind of price drop was in january at iPad launch…

Meanwhile I'm buying plenty of books on amazon to read on the kindle app on iPad ;)

Amazon should make it free, or £30/month with book discount - they'd sell many many more kindles and ebooks that way IMO

Or spend some time making the PC app better.. its pretty basic at the moment.
Posted by Singh400 - Thu 01 Jul 2010 14:27
mikerr
Yeah, amazon really lost a lot of UK sales by not bothering to launch properly here,
They definitely lost my sale for that. Oh well got eBooks on my Desire now :D
Posted by Funkstar - Thu 01 Jul 2010 22:35
Saracen
A move in the right direction I suppose, but it begs he question …. if they can afford to do this now, how much were they milking it for at the old price?
And the problem with that is?

Do you really expect them to see this as BoM plus markup? Same goes for every single piece of technology out there. At new you pay a premium partly because of higher costs, partly just because it is new. This is no different :)