Kindle-ing for the fire
Back in September (If you are going to be late for the party, be spectacularly late for the party), Amazon launched the new line-up of Kindles, at new price points.
- The base model Kindle, simply called the ‘Kindle’, only comes in a Wi-Fi model, exchanges the keyboard for a few navigation buttons, has a smaller battery, and comes with 2GB of storage, half the storage of the previous generation Kindle. This comes in at just $109, making is amazingly cheap and really taking any barrier to entry out of buying an eBook reader.
- The premier model Kindle, called the ‘Kindle Touch’, comes in both Wi-Fi and 3G models, exchanges the keyboard for a touch screen, is lighter, but in other specifications identical to the previous model. $139 for the Wi-Fi model, $189 for the Wi-Fi/3G model.
- The new ‘Kindle Fire’, an Android-based Kindle that is a more general purpose media device, is the new flagship model. Rather than the eInk screens of the traditional Kindle, this device has a 7” ‘Vibrant Color IPS’ LCD screen. $199 is still fairly cheap for a full-fledged Android Tablet.
I was amazed at how cheap the Kindle can now be built and bought for, and a great amount of credit needs to go to Amazon for pushing eBooks forward in a way that traditional publishers were unable and unwilling to, somewhat similar to what Apple did with iTunes to the music industry. I’ll leave you to ponder that further, and move on to the point of this post.
Visiting the main Kindle page reveals an interesting fact, there are in fact 5 variations on sale. Depending on where you visit from, the page may hide the ‘Kindle DX’ at the top of the page, but scrolling down should reveal the full line up in the “Compare Kindles” area which shows that the old 3rd generation Kindle is still for sale as the ‘Kindle Keyboard’ with the price at $139 for the Wi-Fi version and $189 for the 3G version (the old standard prices) and the ‘Kindle DX’ still at $379.
I initially thought that it was a really good thing that Amazon was still selling the old version. Personally, I’ve never had any use for the Kindle keyboard, but if you did prefer it you could still buy it; solving a complaint that people may have about the new versions; it seemed like that was the reasoning and fairly sound reasoning at that, especially considering there is still stock of these in Amazon’s warehouses.
But now that I’ve sung the praises of Amazon, it’s time to examine more closely and see if my praise is misplaced. Let’s look at what is available in Australia…
It turns out that the only new Kindle available in Australia is the base, non-touch, Wi-Fi only ‘Kindle’. You can also buy the old Kindle Keyboard as well as the Kindle DX.
As a side-note: It is a shame that the Kindle DX is still so expensive, this was supposed to be the Kindle perfect for textbooks, and it’s super expensive still. I think Amazon missed an opportunity to build a cheaper large screen Kindle. A Kindle DX without a keyboard and without 3G would have been fine and far cheaper (most Schools, Colleges, Universities and Workplaces now have Wi-Fi) and may have got some traction in this market; as it is its just far too expensive.
So is the reason Amazon won’t sell the new Kindle overseas because they have old stock and don’t value the overseas market nearly as much as the US market? I would say yes given the information available. While I accept that the Kindle Fire has reasons to be limited to the US, due to Amazon’s agreements with publishers for media being US only, I find it hard to fathom that the Kindle Touch has any such restrictions. Perhaps when they have dumped their old stock, they might deign to provide people outside the US with the new model, hopefully sometime before the next new Kindle refresh. As it is, as far as I see it, it’s another black mark against Amazon, and while they are so US centric they will never compete effectively with Apple worldwide. They are lucky that Apple is their own worst enemy when it comes to eBooks currently, or they might be far keener to woo overseas consumers.
While I was annoyed at Amazon last post, I did at least make the point that this was not their fault. In this case, I’m afraid the finger points directly at Amazon. If you do manage to get your hands on a Kindle Touch from the USA, you will be out of luck as it is locked to only allow US IP Addresses, and you will not be able to buy or transfer any books using the device outside of the USA. Say what you want about Apple, at least they don’t treat people outside the USA like second-class citizens when it comes to their hardware.
