sorry, i thought i'd sent this earlier, but evidently not...

***

michael said:
>   Since Amazon has been keeping them such a secret,
>   it seems obvious they are lower than we thought--

a lot of people use that argument.  i'm skeptical of it.

i think it's just as likely that a business would prefer
to keep details of a money-making machine secret,
so as not to entice the competition into the arena...

the noise-makers get more attention, to be sure, but
the stealth ones take more money out of your pocket.

but i don't think that's the case in this situation either.

the truth of the matter for this is much more direct:
the e-ink factory can't make the screens fast enough.
amazon sells 'em as fast as the factory can make 'em.

but even here, that's not the point.  you are looking at
the wrong thing.  the issue is not the number of kindles
that have been sold.  we all agree that number is small.

what's fascinating is that the small number of people
who own a kindle exert a disproportionate influence
in the number of units moved.  and no, that influence
doesn't extend to amazon's bottom line, both because
the e-books are priced lower than the p-books _and_
because amazon currently _subsidizes_ the e-books,
precisely because it wants to move users to the future.

what's important to notice here, though, is that those
users are indeed migrating to the future, and quickly.

-bowerbird



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