You know what they say. Be careful what you wish for. Since last year, I have been talking about the need for Amazon to offer alternative pricing plans to consumers. The more choices we consumers have, the better off we are. It seems Amazon did consider introducing such a subscription plan and decided not to go in that route (for now). Here is what Jeff Bezos had to say:
We’re willing to offer choice and if customers want , I don’t see any difficulty with doing that, but I like the cognitive simplicity of the current model
While that’s great news coming from Jeff, I doubt many people would be interested in paying $60 a month for a wireless plan. You are easily going to pay more than $490 [Kindle DX's current price] in your first year. Many have complained about Kindle being too expensive, but I doubt they’ll be complaining now that Jeff is putting the subscription model on the table.
I do believe that Amazon will eventually go into that route. The one time fee model will only get Amazon so far. The company is expected to introduce a lot of new features with Kindle 3.0 next year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that device came with a subscription plan. As Amazon attracts more Kindle owners, it is going to have to charge to keep Sprint satisfied with the whole deal. Considering that people use their wireless service to do all kinds of things on their Kindle, Amazon needs to find a way to reduce the load on the network and offset the costs. Introducing a wireless and subscription fees is one way to do that, so don’t be surprised if Amazon moved in that direction by the end of 2009.
Your take: would you be interested in paying $60 a month for a Kindle wireless plan if Kindle was offered to you for free?
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2 Responses to “Amazon Considered Subscription Plans for Kindle”
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$60 a month, if it allowed me to tether the internet access to my laptop, maybe
$20 a month for free internet on the kindle and one book. I would do that.
Subcription models have been strangly unpopular with the public. I have always thought it was be much better to pay $15 a month for unlimited music, then to buy albums and songs individually. The marketplace has so far opted for the buy and own model.
No way! I love the kindle DX, but what really sets this reader apart from the others, is the free access to online books w/o a need for a computer.
I love Apple products too, but I refuse to pay AT&T’s outage rates just to say I own an iPhone. That’s just not happening.
I think Amazon made a very, very smart move here, by offering an extremely user-friendly device with free wireless access to the online store and no computer required. Even my mom (who doesn’t and won’t use a computer), is thinking of purchasing the DX because she knows she can shop and read without the worry of subscription rate bills or being tethered to a computer.
That said, I’m a gadget person a heary, but I don’t understand why people insist on adding all the unnecessary “features” to an already great product. It’s a book reader, and a damn good one. Let well enough alone. I’m all about enhancing the core functionality, but I could care less about surfing the net, taking pictures, “tweeting” and “twittering”, touch-screens, etc. For me, this device does not (and should not) replace my iPod or Mac. Once you clutter up something to that degree, you end up with a device that does many things just OK, instead of what it was intended to do extremely well.
I hope if amazon does implement a subscription-based model, they choose to do so for those who have to “have it all”, and for the rest of us, continue to provide free base access for what we really care about… books! Because I, for one, will end the relationship as quickly as it began if the free access is no longer available. After all, that was the major selling point for me.