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Verizon Cuts BlackBerry Storm's Price to $99
Amazon's Kindle 2 Gets $60 Price Drop, Now at $299
AT&T Considering a $10 Cut On Entry Level iPhone Plan
Sony Not Planning PS3 Price Cut for Leipzig, Spokesperson Says
Rumor Says Xbox 360 Getting Another Price Cut in September
Nokia Slashes Cellphone Prices as Much as 10%
MacBook Air With Solid State Drive Gets $500 Price Cut
Deep Euro XBox 360 Price Cuts Coming?
Netflix Confirms $15.99 Price Was Test For Select Few
Xbox 360 Price Cuts: $50 off Premium, $20 off Core, $30 off Elite

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TDBURN
07/18/09

In reply to Verizon Cuts BlackBerry Storm's Price to $99
Blackberry has been doing a good job of getting phones on the market soon after they're announced, like the Tour came out soon after being officially announced.

I wonder if they will have the Storm 2 out within a couple of months?
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ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNO-TOAD
07/18/09

@TDBURN: I think they're just good at keeping their projects a secret.
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tande04
07/18/09

@darkstar - new comment system sucks.: They're terrible at keeping projects a secret. Every phone they've put out anymore leaked early by a year or more.

I'm some what curious about what phone has ever not been release shortly after its announced? The original iPhone was some what of an exception since they didn't want the FCC spoiling it. The Pre too. Pretty much every SE phone.

Even then its defiantly more the rule then the exception that phones aren't officially announced before they're ready to go to market. I don't think that BB has been any better at it then anyone else. If anything they've gotten a couple of major blunders under their belt in that department.
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Pope John Peeps II
07/08/09

In reply to Amazon's Kindle 2 Gets $60 Price Drop, Now at $299
You know the biggest fucking joke about Kindle is the Amazon business model for licensing content. For anyone who thinks this is going to be a portal to cheap, easy digital content, think again. There's a recent Malcom Gladwell article in the New Yorker, where an editor from a Dallas newspaper met with the Amazon people, and came out of the meeting with the incredulous news that Amazon would take 70% of the revenues from Kindle subscriptions with the addendum that Amazon would have the right to license THEIR content to whoever they liked

This is an outrageous and frankly infuriating step by Amazon. I for one will not ever be buying any of their shitty products. I buy my books at local stores and buy my newspapers from publishers and Amazon, the cheap multi-fingered penis waving creature of slime, can eat it right in the face.
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weatherman
07/09/09

@Pope John Peeps II: I can't speak to Amazon's fees to newspapers, but keep in mind that Amazon is covering the costs of wireless delivery and that newspapers use that daily.

As for the licensing rights, my understanding is that Amazon asks for the right to put it on different devices, i.e. the iPhone via Kindle software, and that's why they get those rights.

There are certainly things Amazon does to be infuriated about, I don't think this is one of them.
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Pope John Peeps II
07/09/09

@weatherman: You obviously don't know much about the publishing industry if you think this is fair. To think this is fair is absolutely retarded. For Amazon to demand 70% of the revenues is shit. Newspaper content is difficult and lengthy to produce, far more difficult to produce than wireless delivery and infrastructure.

And that's absolutely NOT how licensing works at all, Weatherman. For you to say that is just mind-boggling. If Amazon wants to reproduce the content of a newspaper in many formats, they should pay for each of those formats. What amazon is asking for is basically to HOLD THE RIGHTS to that content.

So if a newspaper wanted to republish, they'd actually have to purchase their own article. The Kindle is going to be sunk by this. No newspaper in the world would ever agree.
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weatherman
07/10/09

@Pope John Peeps II: I think you're extrapolating a lot from one remark that, as far as I can tell, is unsupported. We don't know what Amazon's publishing contracts look like, and we don't know what their fee structure looks like with major publishers and newspapers. For instance, it could very well be that the fees for a newspaper are 70% if the paper sells at $5/mo. but could be 40% if it sells for $15/mo. We just don't know how it breaks down. I'm not defending the fees - I don't have to. Amazon's got one channel of distribution, not a lock on all distribution. If they want to negotiate their fees that's their business.

As for the licensing, once again I'm going to have to say we just don't know enough about the language of the contract to say exactly what Amazon is going for. I do know how licensing works though, and I know that Amazon would have to get a license that would allow it to deliver the content on multiple platforms if it's going to serve it up on the Kindle or the iPhone or the Blackberry or whatever. That doesn't seem unfair to me at all. And it hasn't stopped the NYT from having their own iPhone app, serving up their content on the web, or licensing their stuff out to third parties in other ways. So clearly this is not a case where Amazon is holding the rights - that would require an exclusive, worldwide license of indefinite duration. Amazon is, near as I can tell without seeing the actual contract, simply asking for the rights to publish on the Kindle and other Kindle-enabled devices, and they're geting those rights in exchange for money that they're paying to dozens of other papers that have made the choice to publish with Amazon, so I have to assume that at least most of them think it's a fair deal and that they're seeing more revenue from it than they would otherwise.
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Edited by weatherman at 07/10/09 7:52 AM weatherman was starred weatherman was unstarred

yogibimbi
07/08/09

In reply to Amazon's Kindle 2 Gets $60 Price Drop, Now at $299
oh, well, for me it would not be 300 USD to "upgrade" to the Kindle, but 300 USD to downgrade from my Palm Centro eReader. Why would I need an additional gadget with quite a bit of a footprint in my luggage, and why spent the extra money?
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weatherman
07/09/09

@yogibimbi: it's a totally different experience reading on a Kindle than on a phone. The screen size is four times as large as your phone, and it can be read in direct sunlight. The battery lasts for thousands of pages, which means you can read for hours on the beach without worrying about running out of juice. Also, for me the main advantage is that the device can download periodicals like the New York Times or the Economist wirelessly, and while you can get 'net access on a phone, you'll spend 10 times as much time loading the pages as you would reading.

Trust me, if you travel or if you read a lot, and especially if you read the paper daily, it's worth the spend :-$
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ScottRose
07/08/09

In reply to Amazon's Kindle 2 Gets $60 Price Drop, Now at $299
Ugh, at least if I buy 100 used paperbacks with that money I get to keep them regardless of what Bezos does in the future.
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