According to Amazon, the newer, stripped down Kindle selling for $139 is outperforming previous units sales-wise, but the giant online retailer stopped short of offering numbers to illustrate exactly how well the new device is selling.
This iteration of the Kindle’s got some added bullet points, but the $139 wi-fi only price point is probably the biggest factor in Kindle’s claimed sales dominance. In addition to a being easier on your wallet, the new Kindle’s got higher contrast (stated 50% better than “any other e-reader”), glareless reading, storage doubled from 2GB to 4GB, and a month of battery life without wi-fi usage, up to three weeks with wireless. Amazon also claims less noisy page turning (was this a problem?), enhanced PDF functionality, and passage sharing with built-in Twitter and Facebook functionality. (The highlighted passage sharing shows up on my iPhone Kindle app to a degree, and it is quite cool to see which phrasing people think is worth pointing out or saving.) Oh also, it uh, never gets hot. Like a laptop or anything. So there’s that.
Amazon has always remained tight-lipped on Kindle sales figures, so the lack of data is not entirely unexpected. New Kindles started shipping two says ahead of schedule, on Wednesday, so many Amazon Prime members will probably be receiving theirs in the mail tomorrow. In today’s release about the sales non-figures, the online superstore reverted to their habit of quantifying Amazon sales to Amazon sales for absolutely zero clarification on anything:
…in the four weeks since the introduction of the new Kindle and Kindle 3G, customers ordered more Kindles on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk combined than any other product, continuing Kindle’s over two-year run as the bestselling product across all the products sold on Amazon.com. The new Kindles started shipping to customers today–two days earlier than previously announced.
Have you caved in since the price cut and jumped on the e-book bandwagon?
