Sunday, February 27, 2011

It's the consumables that make the money, so why no free Kindles?

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: the real money something like printers is in the consumables. For printers, it's paper and ink (or toner). For the Kindle, it's e-books.

Thus, the idea of a free Kindle isn't out of the question. In fact, if one extrapolates the Kindle price drops to now, it leads straight to a free Kindle by Nov. of 2011. The Technium notes:
In August, 2010 I had the chance to point it out to Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon. He merely smiled and said, "Oh, you noticed that!" And then smiled again.
At that point, they slip up and think that an idea posted in February of 2010 was actually posted this year. That said, it's an idea that makes sense: giving free Kindles to Amazon Prime members.

Amazon Prime members recently received access to Instant Streaming on Amazon's video-on-demand service. Right now, Prime members have access to 5,000 movies and TV shows, and that will undoubtedly increase over time.

So, since the consumables are where the money is, could Amazon.com give out free Kindles to Prime members, perhaps by November of 2011? Can you imagine the rush of people who would sign up for the $79 annual Prime subscription, which gives users free two-day shipping on most items, cheap upgrades to one-day shipping, free video streaming, AND a Kindle?

Not only that, it would give Amazon.com such a huge number of Kindle users, the iBook store might never catch up.   A good idea? Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos just needs to pull the trigger.

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