Kindle 3G With Ads Introduced

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A few weeks ago, Amazon introduced a “Kindle With Special Offers”.  It was just a WiFi Kindle that would show you adverts on the home screen and the device’s screen saver, and for that, Amazon would knock $25 off the price of the device. To steal the thunder from today’s announcement about a new E Ink Nook from Barnes & Noble, Amazon has introduced a Kindle 3G With Special Offers.

Like the name implies, it’s a Kindle 3G with the adverts for the reduced price, whereas the original Kindle With Special Offers was WiFi only.  The price is $164 which is, you guessed it, $25 off the sticker price of the Kindle. When we last checked in with the ad-supported Kindle, they had signed on Proctor & Gamble, Visa and General Motors as advertisers. Amazon themselves also seemed to be advertising heavily on the device. I have speculated that ad space on a Kindle could be highly coveted considered that the stereotypical Kindle user is an upper-middle class bookworm with disposable income.

To recap the specs of the Kindle 3, it has a 526MHz Freescale processor, and 3GB of internal memory (which translates to a lot of eBooks). Specs aren’t really important as the Kindle isn’t a tablet in disguise like the Nook. It’s just an eReader. And that it does very well. And I think you’d find that the skimpy 526MHz processor is ample enough.

I think a lot of us are watching the ad-supported Kindles with interest, both us outsiders like bloggers and insiders like other manufacturers. Could ad-supported gadgets work? Would you be willing to get, for example, an ad-supported Android tablet or Chrome netbook? It will be interesting to see how well Amazon does with these ad-supported models.