The move is a curious one for Amazon, which sells the Kindle for $259. Why give away any related software at all? Amazon has not said, but it is easy to guess.
Some consumer electronics research has shown that the Kindle and other e-readers are priced out of the market for many people. Much of the data from these surveys indicates that people may pay $50 or even $100 for an e-reader, but prices over $200 drive potential users away. Amazon may not be admitting it, but the company knows that the Kindle market is limited because of its price.
Free reader software taps into a customer base that may be in the millions. Amazon's Kindle store sells thousands of books, newspapers, and magazines. Some of these are expensive and probably very profitable; an e-subscription to The New York Times, for example, costs $13.99 a month.
Amazon may not be able to sell millions of Kindles, but by making its e-reader software available for free, it may sell hundreds of millions of e-books.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.
