Amazon.com ’s promulgation late Wednesday that it will launch anew variant of its Kindle e - book readerin August could further stoke a price battle between major players in the due east - reader market .
tocopherol - book lecturer price have been slowly fall for months but price stinger start out to gain rate since June , when Barnes & Noble cut the cost of its Nook reviewer and preface a young model at $ 149 .
The damage made it the cheapest eastward - volume reader from a major retailer . It still holds that distinction today , but might not hold it much longer .
Amazon.com ’s third - generation Kindle will add up in two manakin , one with 3 G wireless and one without , and the cheaper of the two will be $ 139 when it go away on sale on Aug. 27 .
It ’s an telling damage declination for the Kindle , the cheapest model of which be $ 259 in the middle of June . In previous August , just two month later on , the Kindle entree spot will have dropped by almost half .
“ At that price i ’ ’s now almost an impulse steal for some consumers , ” order Tim Renowden , an psychoanalyst at Ovum in London . He said he would n’t be surprised if Barnes & Noble further cut the price of the Nook , but that the competition would most be sense by lesser - recognise brands .
Many of these companies have used cost as a central selling point , but with the Kindle so bum it will be tough to contend when Amazon.com offers additional benefits , such as sloshed desegregation with its on-line store and a huge library of books .
The lower monetary value also increases the gap between e - reader and a slew of tablet microcomputer that are now arrive to grocery store . Led byApple ’s iPadand including several promised machines based on Google ’s Android OS , the tablets volunteer many more role than e - readers but are heavier , have much shorter shelling living and are typically more unmanageable to read for long full point of time .
Amazon.com is banking on the lower cost translating into more sales , and there is evidence that could already be take place .
The Kindle had already become the best - selling item on Amazon.com for two years run andlast weekthe company said it had “ reached a tipping point with the new toll of Kindle . ”
“ We ’re seeing very , very unattackable [ Kindle ] gadget outgrowth and we ’re seeing very , very inviolable content growth , ” Thomas Szkutak , Amazon.com ’s chief fiscal officer , tell investors during a conference call .
On Wednesday Amazon enjoin it hadsold out of the $ 189 model .
But the company has to particular date been cagey on just how well the Kindle has been sell and has n’t issue detailed sales figure .
