Jay Yarow in the San Francisco Chronicle writes a post with a title that’s borderline offensive – Check out all these crazy people who think a used Kindle is worth over $200.
He writes -
Now that the iPad is out, the Kindle is toast, right? Apparently not.
We did a quick scan of Craigslist in New York and Austin, as well as completed eBay auctions. People are still asking for, and more importantly, receiving, over $200 for used and new Kindles.
Such a surprise that the main stream press’ predictions that Kindle owners would all sell their Kindles on eBay and buy an iPad instead haven’t materialized.
You’ve got to be crazy not to sell your perfectly good eReader for $200 and buy an iPad for $500.
Why do Used Kindles have so much value?
For the Kindle 2 the difference is just $59. Remember that the Kindle 2 price dropped to $299 in July 2009. You could have bought it then, used it carefully for 8 to 9 months, and sold it now for $200. That has got to be pretty reassuring to prospective Kindle owners.
For the Kindle DX too it’s just a loss of $50 to $100. Plus the price of the Kindle DX hasn’t dropped since it came out.
There are two main reasons that Kindles hold their value so well.
Kindle the service is super valuable
Here is what you get in addition to the physical Kindle -
- Free Internet and Free Wikipedia. Note that if your home country is the US you get free Internet in all 100+ countries that have WhisperNet.
- Access to the Kindle Store from anywhere that has 3G reception and books in 60 seconds.
- The biggest range of ebooks and at the lowest prices.
- WhisperSync which lets you sync notes and highlights and your position in the book across all your devices.
- Kindle Apps for PC, Mac, Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad.
- Sharing across Kindles and Kindle Apps. Read the same book at the same time on 5 or so different devices – that’s 5 people reading one book at the same time.
- Amazon’s customer service and dependability.
That service is free for life (obviously, of the device) and is a huge part of the value of the Kindle.
Kindle the device is pretty good for reading
The Press keep assuming that people who own the Kindle didn’t buy it for reading. The grand argument is that Kindle might be really good for reading – However, there are other devices that are not as good for reading that can do other things you might not be interested in.
It makes no sense – People who want a device dedicated for reading don’t care whether a device can make popcorn.
As an eReader you get a lot of positives -
- eInk which is great for reading.
- Great battery life.
- Text to Speech with some books and all your documents.
- Small and light device.
- Ability to read with one hand.
It’s just a very good device for reading.
Combine the device with the service and you get a very compelling offering.
What are Used Kindles and Used Kindle DXes selling for?
If Mr. Yarrow were to head over to Amazon and check out the Kindle and Kindle DX product pages he’d find -
- Used Kindle 2s are selling for $220 and above. Actually, that one just sold out so now it’s $245 and above (with free covers usually). There are 15 for sale.
- Used Kindle DXes are selling for $449 and above. To be fair one sold for $385 or so yesterday. There are 8 for sale.
Note that these are classified as ‘Used – Like New’ with some described as never having been used.
What about eBay?
New Kindle DXes are selling from $399 and above and ‘barely used’ Used Kindle DXes are selling from $350 and above. Note that these are auctions so the prices do tend to fluctuate a bit around these numbers. There were just 64 results for Kindle DX.
New Kindle 2s are selling for $220 and above and used Kindle 2s are selling for $200 plus – The prices tend to be around $180 an hour or so before the auction ends and go up to $200 or more by the end. There are 340 Kindles for sale.
To give some perspective – there are 404 Kindle owners selling their Kindles at eBay out of total Kindle sales of a few million (1 million if you hate the Kindle, 3 million otherwise). Tack on the 23 at Amazon and assume another 400 at Craigslist and we get 827 Kindle owners selling their Kindles.
Guess the Press Predictions came true
We’ll be generous and multiply the 827 number by 10 – that gives us 8,270 Kindles being sold around the time of iPad launch.
That means the iPad was so impressive to Kindle owners that 0.827% (if you assume 1 million Kindle sold) of Kindle owners sold their Kindles.
If you take a more reasonable number for Kindle sales to date (3 million) you get that 0.225% of Kindle owners sold their Kindles.
This is pretty generous because we’re assuming all these people sold the Kindle specifically to buy the iPad.
No wonder Amazon didn’t drop the prices of the Kindle by $100 to $149 (as Mr. Apple Gene Munster recommended). For some strange reason losing 0.225% of current Kindle owners to the iPad didn’t scare them.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | used kindle, used kindle dx
I now own both the kindle international and the iPad and personally, I don’t think these two devices are comparable. For one thing, the iPad is a computer, not a reader, and secondly, the kindle as a dedicated reading device has a lot of strengths that the iPad doesn’t, for instance the fact that with the wifi setting turned off I had the battery pull 44 days of continuous reading. Because the Kindle is dedicated, there is less temptation to lump everything you do into it, and therefore, less distraction when it comes to using it for it’s primary function, reading. As for the iPad, clearly it’s a more powerful device, but it’s application is also very different. You’re not likely to spend hours reading classics on the iPad. You’re consuming media – video, blogs, games, etc, managing personal productivity, checking references and email, etc. In short, there is no need to stand these two awesome-in-their-own-ways devices against each other. Look for this and other points in the upcoming in-depth iPad review from the Zov Group on May 1st, 2010.