The lock screen shows a giant ad whenever the Kindle is off. Previous Kindles show tasteful pictures of classic authors when they’re off.
This comment says more about how Marco sees technology than anything else. I can understand complaints about the page buttons, the cheap cable, and no power adapter.
But tasteful pictures of classic authors? You're telling me that a creepy-looking picture of Emily Dickinson is a large improvement over an AT&T ad? Look at these screen savers and tell me any of them is worth paying an extra $50:
I agree with the sentiment: ads can be disgusting. I just don't understand how someone could complain when ads mean savings get passed on. Ads make the Kindle more affordable and take us a step closer to a future where everyone can afford technology. That's a trade-off I'm willing to make.
I think the real question is: why is putting ads on our reading devices worth $50 to advertisers? We can be proud and say that such ads have no effect on our behavior, but statistics say otherwise.
Certainly I see a lifestyle difference between friends who watch TV and those who don't, and I spend and desire much less now that I only occasionally watch movies on Netflix.
So it's a Catch-22: you can save money on this purchase, but only by ultimately spending more on things you will later be convinced that you need.
> why is putting ads on our reading devices worth $50 to advertisers? We can be proud and say that such ads have no effect on our behavior, but statistics say otherwise.
This does not actually have to be true. Think about Windows Home vs Professional; it actually takes Microsoft much more work to offer both rather than offer just Professional. The experience is strictly worse for the user, and Microsoft makes less per sale on Home.
So why do they even have a Home edition? It's because of market segmentation and pricing strategies. If it costs $70 marginal cost to manufacture a kindle, you will make some amount of money from each person that pays $79.
What if $9 * # of potential purchases at that price point is less than the flat R&D costs? Then you can't make money at that price point. Now imagine all the kindles cost $100; a lot less people might buy it at $100 than would at $79. It's actually often in the best interest of the company if they could get half the people to pay $100, and anyone who would refuse to pay that to still buy it at $79.
The only way to make that happen is to have to make some sort of differentiating factor that is minor enough so price sensitive people will still buy it, but that people who have the extra money will still pay the higher price. Windows professional is the same as basic for the vast majority of people, yet people still buy professional because to the people who are less price sensitive, it's worth it to not even hypothetically be missing features.
In that way, they could easily be making $0 from the ads, or even negative income by showing the ads and still have it be a good idea to make a version with ads that costs less than the version without ads. It sometimes makes sense for a company to spend more money making a deliberately inferior version.
That's an interesting point, and changes how I look at the new kindles. I had assumed the marginal cost was closer to the ad-free version, and the ads subsidize the price for those who can't afford that. But if the marginal cost is less than $79 it could just be an elaborate price discrimination strategy. Fascinating!
I guess the real question, then, is what's the marginal cost of a Kindle? I haven't seen any tear downs of the new version indicating the component prices.
Call me cynical, but I think the only reason the more expensive option is available is so that most people will accept ads on the cheaper version. If they actually allowed me to put my own images onto the screensaver I might actually go for the more expensive option but as it is I'm bored with the screensavers on my current kindle and wouldn't mind nice looking ads that were constantly changing.
It almost certainly voids your warranty, but you can actually root kindle3s or under pretty easily and install a program/mod that lets you change those backgrounds.
I don't think you can compare a physical product with software like this. The incremental cost of goods of MS Home is a couple dollars; the incremental CoGs for the kindle may be more than the $79 price. At the very least, a segmentation needs to cause CoGs to be covered (note that those CoGs might be covered by the more expensive kindle). Of course, engineering time needs to be taken into account to develop the segmented products.
I don't think the $30 will be earned in ads, but the strategic value of a kindle or two in every house is big.
Of course you can. It's the same economics whether the incremental costs are $2 or $80. You could make a comparison between the Kindle and the Camry the same way. Both exploit price elasticity by segmenting and selling nearly the same product at very different price points. It's irrelevant that the Camry's CoG is probably 200 times that of the Kindle.
What's different about the Kindle vs Windows is not the CoGs. What's different is the indirect pricing. Amazon is willing to sell the Kindle for cost because they know they'll make their money in sales of books. Microsoft won't really make any extra money just because you buy Windows. (Windows 8 with the App Store will probably change that somewhat.) On the other hand, Microsoft sells Windows to OEMs very cheap, because there's value in having such huge market share.
Agreed. No TV means no restaurant commercials, so I've been eating at home more often. On the other hand, I bought a reading light after seeing a Kindle ad for it. The Kindle has also saved $15 on Amazon purchases I would've made anyway, though.
I dunno, it really depends on your taste for consumption.
YMMV, but I actually love the screen savers on the Kindle. Worth $50? Dunno. But it's nice to have at least one part of our lives not be infested by ads.
That picture is what tilted the scale for me to get the $79 version. I don't have to look at that creepy face staring back at me, while saving thirty bucks.
Heh I actually don't mind that picture and I like the author photos.
I am still on a kindle 2 and if I were going to upgrade it would be to the keyboard 3g without ads but for now as long as my kindle 2 isn't broken and keeps that amazing battery life with 3g off I don't see any reason to upgrade just yet. Now if they cut the price of the kindle keyboard 3g with no ads in half for prime subscribers however I would buy it in an instant.
I don't mind the ads, as they get out of the way when I read.
Targetted ads can be very useful, for example, when I buy a hotrod magazine I buy it for the ads. However, the current Kindle ads are not targetted at all, none of them seem to have any relationship to things I do buy on Amazon.
Yeah to be honest, I never understood that. Google's serving things that will hopefully be more relevant to your interests and you might enjoy. Personally, I think it beats all the other ads about tips on how to whiten my teeth or lose 10 pounds.
I think the (anticipated) trouble with targeted ads is that they compete for your attention with the content that you were trying to view in the first place. Imagine you sit down to read a book and are first hit with an ad which, at that moment, actually seems more compelling than the book, because unlike the book, it has been perfectly refined by analyzing your actual behavior to attract your attention.
It depends what you were browsing when it picked up your interests and who is watching when it shows the ads!
A UK ISP got into trouble when it was (illegally) tracking all your web browsing and replacing each site's ads with it's own ads based on your browsing history.
When it replaced the ads for a childrens charity on a national fundraising event with some targeted at 'gentlemen's special interest' sites there was something of an outcry
I don't understand why, at least on the non-ad banner versions, why Amazon doesn't allow people to load their own images for use as screensavers. B&N allows this with the Nook and I think that it's pretty cool.
Yeah, there are quite a few options that seem like they should be native, but I had to hack the device to get. Custom screen savers is one. Another is force left-justify on everything.
Is the quality good enough? It seems like 9 out of 10 people make their screensaver their SO or kids. If the average use case is going to have people going "ugh, this screen is terrible", it's probably not a good idea.
Oh yeah, I've definitely seen people who have nice screensavers. My point was that people who naively put photos on without preprocessing, reducing color depth, etc, would probably be disappointed.
For what it's worth, I have the non-ads current generation Kindle and the screensavers are not famous authors anymore, but instead macro shots of writing instruments. Pencils, quills, typewriter heads, etc.
On this lowest end model, it's $30. On the Kindle Touch, it's $40. On the Kindle Keyboard 3G, it's $50. Kinda strange, since you would think the value of the ads would be constant.
This comment says more about how Marco sees technology than anything else. I can understand complaints about the page buttons, the cheap cable, and no power adapter.
But tasteful pictures of classic authors? You're telling me that a creepy-looking picture of Emily Dickinson is a large improvement over an AT&T ad? Look at these screen savers and tell me any of them is worth paying an extra $50:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LasvphqtfV0
I agree with the sentiment: ads can be disgusting. I just don't understand how someone could complain when ads mean savings get passed on. Ads make the Kindle more affordable and take us a step closer to a future where everyone can afford technology. That's a trade-off I'm willing to make.