Borders Sort of Responds to the E-Reader Price Wars. You Out There, Sony?
By Harry McCracken | Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 2:24 pm
As of Sunday night, the Kobo e-reader sold by Borders was a $150 gadget that dramatically undercut the $259 pricetag on Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook. Then B&N cut the Nook’s price to $199 and introduced a $149 model, and Amazon responded by knocking the Kindle down to $189. The Kobo is still a cheap e-reader, but not strikingly so–especially considering that it has neither a 3G connection nor Wi-Fi.
So Borders has taken action, but not in the form of a straight price reduction: It’s including a $20 gift card with purchase of the Kobo, reducing the effective cost of the e-reader to $129. I don’t think Kobo matters enough (at least not yet) for Amazon or B&N to feel forced to react to this price cut. But I suspect that before all the product introductions and price reductions are done with, we’ll see three standard price points for e-readers: $200 or thereabouts for 3G models, $150 or thereabouts for slightly less fancy ones, and $99 or thereabouts for basic models that you might still plausibly want to own.
Still to be heard from: Sony, whose $169.99 Reader Pocket Edition and $199.99 Reader Touch Edition are now a tad pricey–and whose already-big-ticket $349.99 Daily Edition is totally out of whack with the e-reader economics that Barnes & Noble and Borders established yesterday,
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Despite E-reader Wars, Borders Still Offers Cheapest Option « MB Promotions Says:
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August 16th, 2010 at 12:46 pm[…] to double down on), and Sony’s Reader (the first modern e-reader). Oh, and there’s Kobo, the Canadian e-reader backed by Borders. I don’t see any of these going away anytime […]
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Sony’s been selling the Pocket on sale for $150 for a few weeks in their stores. Not sure if new models are coming or they’re testing a lower price point. Maybe both.
June 22nd, 2010 at 2:50 pm
A Chinese manufacturer of e-readers, Hanvon, was at the BookExpo America last month looking to cut deals with OEMs. They’re looking at putting their reader, which can run on Android or Linux, on the market for under $100.
June 23rd, 2010 at 2:32 pm
The Kobo isn’t a usable product. It’s already here in Canada, and takes ~30 seconds to start up from sleep. I wrote about this on my blog.
I’m betting on a new Kindle version before the summer is out.
December 14th, 2011 at 3:36 am
A Chinese manufacturer of e-readers, Hanvon, was at the BookExpo America last month looking to cut deals with OEMs. They're looking at putting their reader, which can run on Android or Linux, on the market for under $100.
January 25th, 2012 at 3:34 am
A Chinese manufacturer of e-readers, Hanvon, was at the BookExpo America last month looking to cut deals with OEMs. They're looking at putting their reader, which can run on Android or Linux, on the market for under.
January 26th, 2012 at 6:49 pm
This is just what I was looking for. I did not expect that I’d get so much out of reading your write up! You’ve just earned yourself a returning visitor.
February 2nd, 2012 at 4:09 am
Sony's been selling the Pocket on sale for $150 for a few weeks in their stores. Not sure if new models are coming or they're testing a lower price point. Maybe both.