Amazon Kindle Book Reader Costs High for Indians at 20000Rs

The most preferred Book Reader from Amazon the Kindle 2 is going to be available Worldwide from October 19, 2009 with a special discounted pricing. Iam sure many Indians are waiting for this stuff because Importing one directly would cost seriously a lot of money and also waiting time because they have to get it ordered through some friends or else through other Online websites which offer Duty Free Shopping

The current pricing of Kindle 2 in the International Market is at 279$ which comes to somewhere around 13000Rs in India. To cross check i tried out the Amazon Store to see whats going to be the Take Home Price for Indians when they order it through the Amazon.com Online Store. First of all there are three different models available and only the Basic version of Kindle would be available for International Wireless coverage. Followed is a small list of Items which wont be available to Indian Kindle Owners.

1. Blogs and the experimental web browser are currently not available for your country.
2. Your international shipment is subject to customs duties, import taxes and other fees levied by the destination country. We will show you these fees upon checkout.
3. Kindle ships with a U.S. power adapter and a micro-USB cable for charging your Kindle via a computer USB port. The U.S. power adapter supports voltages between 100V – 240V.
4. Wireless download times can vary based on 3G or EDGE/GPRS coverage, signal strength and file size.

From the past 2-3 years we have been hearing that 3G technology would come Live but still everyone is waiting for the same and the Kindle supports 3G you are again having a feature on your gadget which you cannot use. Similarly the Import Duty could range from 30%-40% just increasing your total bill for this device from 13000Rs to somewhere around 20000Rs which is a very high price considering the features. At this price you can easily own a mini laptop ie a Netbook with real high features and full featured computing rather than just a Book Reader which is slim and light weight.

While doing a quick check i found that the Blogs & Browser access is available to very limited locations like Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong etc and not everywhere. Also many Kindle users are reporting that while they are trying to buy Books using the Kindle, they are not able to complete the transaction if the Credit Card is registered with a US Address, if Amazon is planning for a Global release we hope that many of these limitations would be handled and users can use this device with lot of flexibility if not other products like Sony Reader Digital Book would take away Amazon’s Market Share.