Disagreeing With $149 as a Magic Number

To clarify, I don’t think $149 is the “magic number” for mainstream adoption, because I don’t believe eReaders will EVER have their fabled iPod moment, but I do think it’s the right price for the Nook, and will be attractive to anyone who’s been hesitant to buy the Kindle 2 at $259.

I also don’t see a legitimate $99 eReader ever happening without a subscription plan of some sort to go with it, something I suspect only Amazon or B&N could pull off, and likely only if publishers bought into it, which I don’t see happening in the near future.

Was the second bar Botanica? (I went straight there, so don’t remember the order.) I think I win this bet either way, so you’re on!

“…attractive to anyone who’s been hesitant to buy the Kindle 2 at $259.” What about at $189?: http://yhoo.it/98j1ll

You think folks’ll quibble over $40?

Want to make a reader under $100? Don’t use eInk. If you do use eInk, hitting that price point, let alone making money on the deal, will be a challenge. (iSuppli did a teardown where the estimated the eInk screen and controller at about $80 of a Kindle’s costs.)
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Dennis

Back when I covered the Sony Reader launch for MR, eInk’s VP or Marketing told me other manufacturers besides PVI had licensed the technology, so supply constraints weren’t weren’t a Sony worry – they could *get* the screens. Subsequently, PVI *bought* eInk, which made me wonder a bit what the effect would be.

Yeah, the component cost will come down, but I doubt it will come down *enough* to make a >$100 reader possible. And with several new display technologies promising color, fast refresh, *and* low battery usage emerging, eInk will need more than cost reductions.

My personal feeling is that dedicated readers are a niche market, not large enough to support the volumes needed for really low cost devices. The Apple iPad, which supports color and has a roughly reader form factor may point the direction of the future. You won’t see one >$100, but it’s a multi-function device that can do other things besides display ebooks. People who would balk at the price of a dedicated reader might not balk at the higher price of a multi-function device in that form factor.

You can’t view YouTube on a reader…
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Dennis

There’s a limit to how much you can squeeze suppliers before they politely decline the business because they won’t make money on it. I think trying to produce an eInk reader a < $100 pretty well defines that point.

And the upcoming Kindle (with the reported “paper white” display) is at most an incremental improvement, which I don’t see affecting costs.

I’ve never really seen the Kindle as more than a pump-primer. From where I sit, for Amazon, it’s about the books. They see a market in ebooks, and want to be the dominant vendor supplying them. They are leveraging their strengths in catalog marketing and as the dominant paper book retailer, and adding ebooks which don’t have warehousing or distribution costs.

It doesn’t matter to them whether you have a Kindle, or you use the iPhone or PC Kindle viewer app. (And given their increasing popularity, a Kindle reader app for Android devices strikes me as a likely next target.)
If you read Kindle editions, you are locked into Amazon as the supplier, and the vendor lock-in is the point.
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Dennis

Yeah, you’re right. I should have Looked Stuff Up before making that remark. Nice to see I was on target about Amazon’s probable direction. I suspect the success of the Motorola Droid (which has put Motorola back in the cell phone race) may have been the deciding factor.