Amazon fudges UK Kindle ereader launch
So the Amazon Kindle ereader is finally coming to the UK. Well sort of. It turns out that the company isn’t actually delivering a UK-centric model, but is rather shipping a 3G Kindle that it is billing as the ‘Kindle US and International Wireless.’ From 19th October Brits will be able to buy it from Amazon’s US Store and then import it to the UK. The downside of this is that any purchasers will have to pay import tax which should bump up the cost of the ereader to around £200.
The new Kindle certainly looks the business. It is pretty skinny at 0.36inches thin, sports a six inch screen and comes with 2Gigabytes of storage capable of housing 1500 books.
At the same time Amazon has confirmed that it is dropping the price of its US model to $259.
Our take is that this is pretty poor stuff from Amazon. Although the product is likely to be high quality it is going to be much pricier and more complex to use than its rivals. This leaves the door open for rival companies such as COOL-ER, Sony and Asus to grab significant market share.
