Amazon has reduced the price of its Kindle electronic book reader by 10 percent and it is now available to customers for $359 down from $399.
The Kindle launched late last year and Amazon ran into problems keeping the Kindle in stock. Wait times for some customers reached months. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos posted a letter on the company’s Web site apologizing for the delay. “We didn’t expect the demand that actually materialized,” Bezos wrote.
Since Amazon does not charge customers until their items ship, anyone waiting for a Kindle should be able to pay the lower price. The company also offers price matching for anyone who ordered in the past 30 days.
Since the Kindle’s launch, Amazon has added more content offerings for the reader, including more than 125,000 books, 18 daily newspapers, 333 magazines and hundreds of blogs.
Electronic books are available for around 60 percent off the cover price while newspapers and magazines have even larger discounts. Content is delivered wirelessly through Sprint’s EVDO network.
The Kindle has a 6- inch screen that can display 800×600 resolution, 256 MB internal memory, SD slot that can hold up to 4 GB memory stick, mini USB, keyboard cursor, QWERTY keyboard, and a 3.5 mm headphone.
Analysts project that Amazon sold around 50, 000 Kindle’s in the first quarter of 2008.
