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by Jason S, India

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Amazon Kindle finally hits Indian shores

Oct 26, 2009 00:06

There's good news for geeky bookworms in India as the Amazon Kindle will soon be officially launched in India. Until recently, the Amazon Kindle was marketed as a "Made for the USA" product, but now it has been brought out to over 100 countries around the world--luckily, that list includes India.

While in India, the Amazon Kindle will offer over 280,000 books and magazines at various price points. There is also some free content and Amazon's renowned offer of low-priced books, with the lowest cost being US$5.99. Sadly, we will have only the second-generation Kindle 2 on offer in India, which was launched in the US earlier this year.

The latest offering in America, the Kindle DX, will be available only some time next year! Now that's a long wait!

Amazon will ship the Kindle 2 directly from the US upon an order and promises a two-to-seven day timeline for delivery, which I seriously doubt is possible. The Kindle guarantees that at any given time the e-book reader can store up to 1,500 digital books, and also boasts that a complete book can be "downloaded" onto the Kindle 2 in less than 60 seconds. The device currently uses a GSM/3G connection for network access, but does not come with Wi-Fi.

For India which does not have 3G at the moment, having Wi-Fi would have actually made more sense since the mobile networks here are much slower on the current EDGE/GPRS connections.

Since the Kindle 2 sports a grayscale screen, it has amazing battery life of almost four days. So, who's gonna get an Amazon Kindle for Christmas?

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Applodian

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Applodian says...
Do we still know the final pricing for the Amazon Kindle 2 including shipping charges...? I was told by my friend that it would cost somewhere in the lines of INR 12,000 to INR 13,000. Now this is obviously without the shipping charges...
Plus are we gonna be able to buy books using our own Credit Cards issued in India...? I've emailed the Amazon people but haven't received any response from them yet.

Thanks in advance,

Regards,
Sidharth.V.

Oct 26, 2009 11:10

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About Jason S

Jason S is an ardent Web surfer and a technologist. He works in Bangalore with a leading software company. His passion includes blogging about the various technologies and interesting stuff that he comes across everyday, and also trying out new technologies, gadgets and software. He has a personal tech blog named The Most Authoritative Technology Blog. He loves networking with friends & the tech community at large and can be found at LinkedIn.