A handful of people have noticed that the price for Amazon’s Kindle has been steadily dropping. That fact alone shouldn’t be surprising, because almost any gadget experiences a price drop as time passes by. The thing is, the rate at which the price of the device is decreasing is quite consistent, and if we were to trust in that rate, then we can predict that by November of this year the Kindle would be free.
Kevin Kelly even mentioned this extrapolation to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. His reaction? “He merely smiled and said, “Oh, you noticed that!” And then smiled again.” But it would be stupid to expect Amazon to just give away the product to anyone right? Michael Arrington has a possible answer to that: give the Kindle for free to the people who have already proven themselves to be spenders. And not just spenders, but Amazon spenders – Amazon Prime members.
That way the Kindle would be like razors or printers – the profit would come from the content. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens this year, but if all this turns out to be true, then Amazon has quite an attractive proposition here. For $79 (USD) a year, Prime members already get free 2-day shipping (no minimum amount required), reduced rates on 1-day shipping, and free streaming of videos via Amazon Instant Video. By next year, Amazon will probably be paying Prime members to take a Kindle. At least that’s what the graph says. Or not.
[via J-Walk Blog & TechCrunch via The Technium via Kottke ]
