Archive for June 2009
Bezos Commits to Losing Money On Kindle Editions On Multiple Devices
The NYT reports more remarks from Jeff Bezos at the Wired conference: (boldface comments mine)
“The device team has the job of making the most remarkable purpose-built reading device in the world. We are going to give the device team competition. We will make Kindle books, at the same $9.99 price points, available on the iPhone, and other mobile devices and other computing devices.”
In other words, he both perpetuates the $9.99 is our top price fallacy, and commits the company to losing money on Kindle files even when it isn’t making money on the device sales. As for why they don’t sell the Kindle reader at a discount in exchange for an agreement to purchase content, “My opinion, and so far the market has responded to our approach, is very simple. Instead of driving the cogitative complexity of a two-year commitment, tell people, “This is the actual cost of the device.’”
He also states that the Kindle will be able to read other ebook formats in the future:
The latest Kindle model has better support for Adobe’s PDF file format, and he said that in the future, Kindle readers would support other formats as well. (He didn’t say anything about Adobe’s protected format, which competes more directly with the Kindle format.)
from publisher’s lunch
