22nd
Who says Subscription-based Business Model is Obsolete?
You’ve probably heard about Amazon Kindle the e-book reader by now. Great concept overall, and I’m already looking forward to their version 2.0 - hopefully by then e-ink technology supports color and multimedia.
The Kindle sells for $399, including wireless access (no subscription to Sprint required). Books sell for $10 on Kindle vs. say $15 from the Amazon website, so as a user you’ll break even after buying 60 books.
What’s interesting is that Kindle users will have to pay 99c per month for access to blogs such as TechCrunch, SlashDot, Boing Boing, etc. In my understanding, that’s the fee for being able to download the content so you can read them even when not wirelessly connected.
Amazon’s decision to charge for blogs, especially as WSJ is contemplating dropping subscriptions, gets me thinking about business models on the Web. Amazon is challenging the assumption that subscription-based model is pretty much obsolete for news/blogs content.
Could it be that Kindle’s business model won’t work out without subscription fees on all content? That may explain why the Web browsing feature is buried deep in the menu. What made them decide text ads isn’t the way to go?
