The other day, Amazon announced it was releasing a new Kindle, and the price was lowered to $139. Now, this isn’t a big deal, and that’s great, if you want one of those things, but what’s amazing is that the boss of Amazon claims that the price is so low that people are going to rush out and buy several of them for the household. Yeah, right. Not going to happen. I love how the multi-millionaire boss of a major company thinks that $139 is the sweet spot for a tech gadget, so he makes a pronouncement that the end of the road is finally here. And then the tech nuts start talking about how $100 is the sweet spot for most electronic gadgets, the sweet spot being the price people will arbitrarily just throw money away without thinking about it.
Sorry, the Kindle isn’t there yet. You see, there are some problems that no one has addressed, and that’s the fact that people actually think about these things before they shell out a lot of money for products. Oh, you say that Amazon just announced they sold out of their Kindles until Sept. 4? So what? To me, that sounds like their marketing department made an announcement to create a “need” for this device when there really isn’t one yet. I don’t personally believe a lot of the hype that these companies put out, because what they’re trying to do is manipulate us into buying their products by pretending that if we don’t do soon, it will be too late.
I went to Amazon’s page today. They’re still hyping the new Kindle as if they have a gazillion of them. They’re not going to NOT take my order if I want one. The hype is just that: hype.
What no one really wants to talk about is the actual cost of this device. Unlike a cell phone, this is not a final purchase product, meaning that once you buy it, you still have to spend a lot of money on other things, like books. If you buy a Kindle, you still need to buy electronic books from Amazon. For Amazon, it’s the product that keeps on charging. Because of that, $139 is still too much money. To be honest, $99 is going to still be too much money.
A couple of experts have pointed out that the sweet spot for an e-reader is still $49. Until they start coming down to that level, the demand is never going to happen. Because there is no demand for an e-reader. People in America generally don’t read. So pretending there is a demand for a reading product is a joke. When people buy books in America, they still buy actual paper type books, and that’s not going to change any time soon. People are so aware of the fact that few electronic products are good forever, but books are. If you bought a computer ten years ago, you wouldn’t have much success getting it to run today. So, who knows what is going to happen with e-reader technology in the future? It’s like taking a bet on the Blu Ray vs. whatever that other standard was that was supposed to compete with Blu Ray disks. It’s like taking a bet on the betamax. Remember that? Didn’t last long.
That’s why e-readers still have a long way to go, because there’s been no standardization developed, and we’re still some ways off from that happening. No one wants to buy a useless piece of garbage that has a shelf life of a few years.
Until then, only the select few are really going to jump on the e-reader bandwagon, kind of like the select few who buy Ipads, convinced it will be the coming of the electronic messiah. I almost bought one, but I’m so glad I didn’t because it would be in the back of the closet right now with my Coleco and Atari machines.