[augustus]

In my humble opinion, I can't see the Kindle succeeding in this pricing model.

I really respect Bezos but to me he is seeing things from his side not the customers.

The consumer has limited space in his pocket. Why would anyone want to have a Phone and a Kindle with them at the same time.

I can't really see the Kindle appealing to the mass market with that pricing model. I think Amazon's best bet might be offering subscription through smartphones like iPhone and others.

When the iPhone originally came out with the $500 price tag it only appealed to the fan boys. But by cutting the initial price they started appealing to the average Joe.

The thing with the average joe is that they don't do the two year math. They only look at the upfront price. We justified our monthly data plan costs by getting rid of our land line. I think that's why the smartphone makes sense to lots of consumers.

[JoelSutherland]

When a Kindle version of a book is available it makes up 35% of that book's sales. (http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-kindle-sales-no...)

It has succeeded already by most reasonable business measures.

[lacker]

The consumer has limited space in his pocket. Why would anyone want to have a Phone and a Kindle with them at the same time.

I think this misses the point. A Kindle doesn't even fit in your pocket. The value of a Kindle is not that you take it with you anywhere, but that for many people it's a better way of reading books.

[jrockway]

Indeed. I do most of my Kindle reading on my couch.

Of course, it's also nice to have the same ability on an airplane, too. And it's nice that the battery doesn't die in an hour like my phone would.

I wouldn't want a Kindle if my phone could magically shape-shift to be the size of a book and if it had unlimited battery life. But in the real world, you have to compromise.

[cmos]

Actually, the price doesn't really matter right now. Jeff is clever enough to be aware that he's only selling to early adopters, and that will be the case for the next couple years.

As long as he can build the infrastructure + database of online books, he might realize that his distribution company won't make the best electronic book reader in the world, and open his distribution channel to other manufacturers.

What he's doing is sliding the bubble closer so he can make the market mature faster. The money made/lost at this point is insignificant compared to when the prices of the displays plummet and the market for electronic books really takes off.

As apple proved, it's all about the content.