Buried beneath all the talk of the new iPhone OS (iOS, if you will) and the delights and disappointments of E3 was a little news item – Amazon had slashed the price of its Kindle e-book reader by a staggering $70, bringing it to $189. Now, if you factor in handling costs and imports fees, that works out to be something in the vicinity of $ 283 for those wanting to order it from India. Yes, that does not make it dirt cheap, but if you consider the fact that when it was launched in India in October, it’s total cost of ownership was something in the range of $373, the drop starts looking interesting. Speaking in Indian rupees, it then cost about Rs 17,000, and now comes for around Rs 13,000 – about a fourth cheaper.
And this finally brings the Kindle to the e-book party in India. Thus far, the e-book reader had been undermined by a price tag that was well above the psychological price point of Rs 10,000. Well, it still is above that, but at Rs 13,000, it definitely seems a better proposition than the Infibeam Pis of the world, which cost lesser but have nothing like the Kindle’s hardware, interface or data access (yes, we can only browse the Amazon bookstore and Wikipedia on it, but still). The improved support for PDFs brought in by the 2.5 update also helps, though the Twitter and Facebook option will not work in India. Yes, books downloaded directly over the air will still cost a bit more but one can sell a bit of a dummy and download them to the PC and transfer them to the device.
Yes, there are those who will still advocate the iPad or the Nook as a better device. However, none of those are officially available in India yet. The Kindle is. And now it costs just about as much as a mid-segment smartphone. We are tempted, we know. And so will be many other book lovers!
I read in places that the browser is available globally now. Could you tell me if kindle international in India with latest firmware update has allowed browser generally or is it still restricted to wikipedia.?
We wish that were true. Nope as of now, you are pretty much restricted to Wikipedia when on the Kindle in India. Just hope that that changes soon.
I have a Kindle and the browser was unlocked, beyond wikipedia, along with the v2.5 rollout. EDGE undermines the browsing a bit but with the promise of 3G soon, one can wait.
Another thing the recent update did was improve the PDF experience. Even after this update, I still find it inconvenient. My recommendation would be to go for the Kindle DX rather if you do a lot of PDF reading. Kindle DX’s screen size is appropriate for PDFs.
Thanks for this info Deepak. You mention of the “promise of 3g” but do you think that Amazon has given any indication (when) it will move to 3G in India?
Also amazon website says blogs are not available for India. If I can access the blogs from the browser, is it any different from what they provide (like an rss reader)?
Blogs offered by Amazon, unavailable in India, are delivered directly to your Kindle in Kindle ready format. While this is convenient, you would be charged for this service. On the other hand, Accessing them directly on the browser wouldn’t incur any charges to you but it would be slightly inconvenient because of the ads and other non-relevant content on their sites.
One problem I have with Amazon’s Kindle ready content sent to the device is that they are sent without pictures to Indian users. So one might be missing out on relevant information.
As for 3G, some users who are in a 3G circle seem to be able to use Kindle at 3G speeds. So I am hoping for Airtel/Vodafone to enable 3G here too.
Hmm…understand. Thanks again Deepak for sharing this info. I look forward to buying a kindle someday as I am more for broad daylight & stree-free reading (like sitting in your house porch or balcony). For me an ipad does not serve that purpose. However, ever since I got a whiff that they might be releasing a new kindle somewhere near october this year, I have decided to wait.
Deepak,
Thanks for your great feed back., now a days BSNL already launch its 3g Services in most of the cities and private also coming to picture side by side…
By the by where you are from… ? I started using BSNL 3G in my latest samsung Galaxy 3 it is Awesome experience….
Murali
Hi,
Can I access the so-called “free” services on the kindle on a public wi-fi network without any charges? Amazon claims that I can download the “free” out-of-copyright material from the kindle store for free. Has anyone expereinced any problems with this?
Can anyone pl. answer my three questions? 1 Experience with 3G Kindle in Delhi, India. – downloadable ability & speed for text and pictures as well, accessibility of Facebook etc., quality of service and connectibility, cost in India, visual clarity & readability etc.