It’s an E-Reader Price War! Amazon Trumps Barnes & Noble With $189 Kindle.
That didn’t take long. This morning, Barnes & Noble (BKS) dropped its low-end Nook e-reader to $149 and its 3G model to $199, giving it an edge (pricewise, at least) over Amazon’s Kindle.
Not any more–Amazon (AMZN) just cut the price of its 3G Kindle model from $259 to $189.
The 27 percent price drop was no surprise–everyone who follows the market assumed the Kindle would drop below $200 soon. There is still a belief that Amazon will add more bells and whistles soon as well to help the device compete with the iPad from Apple (AAPL). But I have a feeling that Jeff Bezos and company will resist the urge to pile on features for features’ sake.
The choice for consumers now is clearer than ever: Get a single-purpose reading device for less than $200 or pay much more for a computer that also has e-reading software.