Wow! The Kindle is now just $189.
Soon after B&N cut the price of the Nook to $199 and introduced a $149 Nook WiFi Amazon responded and cut the price of the Kindle to $189.
Both the Kindle and the Nook are now incredible value for money. The Kindle especially as it comes with free Internet, free downloads around the World (for US owners), and lots of Kindle Apps so you can read your books on lots of different devices. You can also sync your notes, collections, and book marks across your Apps and Kindle(s).
Thoughts on the $189 Kindle 2
The Kindle was very good value for money at $259. At $189 it’s an absolute steal -
- Free wireless with store browsing and 60 second downloads.
- Free Internet and for US owners free Internet and free downloads of books in 100+ countries.
- A screen built for reading. A device built for reading.
- Better PDF support with the Kindle 2.5 update.
- Lots of great features like Folders and Text to Speech (when not disabled by Publishers).
- The best range of new books.
- The best prices for ebooks. Except Agency Model Publishers’ books which are priced at the same ridiculously high prices everywhere.
- A wide range of Kindle Apps so you can read your books on the PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and soon on Android.
- A 1 year warranty (does not include accidents and drops – please read the fine print) so you are covered for the first year.
If you’ve been on the fence it’s time to get off.
B&N get credit for pushing us below $200
Yesterday the de-facto price point for the main line of eReaders was $259 with the two best options, Kindle and Nook, both at $259. Today, they are at $189 for the Kindle and $199 for the Nook.
B&N deserves a lot of credit for bringing competition to the market in end 2009 and forcing Amazon to add PDF support and other features and for doing a huge price-cut now and forcing Amazon to bring the Kindle down to $189. It’s just a totally different world when there are multiple competitors.
Additional credit for not doing something underhanded like colluding with Publishers or raising book prices – Fighting on price and features is an honorable thing to do. Lots of credit to Barnes & Noble for fighting clean and with spirit.
Filed under: kindle Tagged: | $189 kindle, kindle price cut
Urghhhhhhhhhhh good for Amazon though
I wonder if this is where the price stabilizes or if it continues to go lower. I would hope for lower but that is just me being selfish. I am currently saving up to buy an e-reader and this makes it a lot easier.
I would very much see Nook dropping another $10 tomorrow to match the Kindle price.
Very, very nice. If mine should die, I’d be thrilled to get a new one for near this price, but I bought mine for 3 hundred and something. (I love mine so much and haven’t questioned if it was worth the price for so long that I can’t even remember how much it was – about four hundred with the case, which was thirty or so dollars.)
I may… may consider a $149 Nook, but that’s only if they start offering more free books that I can’t get on the Kindle. And I couldn’t get the more in store, so I may end up looking at a fully equipped Nook, although that would take much, much, much more convincing…
> 6 The best range of new books.
> 7 The best prices for ebooks. Except Agency Model Publishers’ books which are priced at the same ridiculously high prices everywhere.
Hardly. I will not buy any books with DRM. Hence, more than 99% of the Amazon do not count. The rest of the books are platform-agnostic.
We already went though this with MP3s.
Until publishers wake up to the inevitable same conclusion and drop DRM, eBooks will never reach mass adoption.