Wow! that was quick.
In less than 10 days of launch of their Indian dedicated site, Amazon has gone ahead and listed Kindle devices as well as much needed ebooks on their India site.
If you visit Amazon.in site right now, you will be greeted with featured Kindle devices listed on the homepage. Currently the 5th generation Kindle, Paperwhite as well as Kindle Fire tablets are available in Wi-Fi as well as 3G versions.
The lowest end 6 inch Wi-Fi Kindle is available for Rs. 5999 and while the top end Kindle Paperwhite 3G is listed for Rs. 13,999.
However, the most interesting part about these listings is that even though it is listed by Amazon on their site, it is not directly sold by Amazon. Croma Retail will be offering these Kindle devices, while it will be fulfilled by Amazon India.
One has to understand that Amazon.in being a marketplace can forge partnership with these retailers and start offering products. It looks like some government regulations or FDI policy may be the reason why they are not able to offer it themselves directly.
Another important aspect is listing of Kindle e-books. Though the ebooks are listed on Amazon.in in Indian rupees, the user has to still go to the parent Amazon.com site to buy these books. When you select an e-book for purchase, it clearly mentions “Buy this eBook on Amazon.com”. So, the listing on amazon.in site is just a front-end listing, with no back-end integration with Indian site.
We tried making an e-book purchase and while making the purchase, the amount actually gets converted to US dollars. see the screenshot below.
So even though Amazon’s India site is showing Kindle ebooks, it not selling it from India. They remain part of their parent US site.
But here is something that may interest Kindle owners – For the next two weeks Amazon will be giving away popular bestselling titles for free, one eBook each day — for that day only. The free eBook of the day goes live at midnight (IST) and ends at 11:59 pm the same day. So, if you have a Kindle, you should not miss these 15 free books.
So, what do you think about this move by Amazon.in to list devices / eBooks, but not actually sell it themselves?
Mr.Arun
I like your article about kindle.
I have kindle given as a gift from USA by my daughter and currently I am using the same for reading books now when I am on vacation in US.
Books I buy from Amazon,are debited to my icici bank account in India in rupees,but the price is indicated in $.
kindle buffet news letter gives details of some books allowed free of cost.You may use thi information.
JRKumar
Nice points indeed. I was thinking about the same while I try to get access to one of the eBooks. According to me Amazon.In is trying to make a strong impact on the Indian users. It has the back of the Amazon.Com, which is currently handling the limitations of the Indian marketplace like its parent body. The only problem is the currency conversion rate, which is making the devices costlier for us. I hope it (Amazon.In) might soon sell it by its own.
Its really encouraging that amazon has started to offer the Kindle Devices in India. But Pricing strategy seems to be wrong. The Kindle is competing with several other low cost tablets and since kindle is only a e-reading device, I think it may not appeal the buyers. The lowest kindle on Amazon.com is $69 (Rs. 4k) but Amazon is selling this for Rs.6k. Not encouraging. However, Kindle is beautiful device and here is my review of Kindle Paperwhite specifically for GRE/GMAT Students.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryk6OjO_jf8