After the triumphant summer marked by the conquest of the historic Washington Post, Amazon's number one, Jeff Bezos, is preparing to amaze again: according to increasingly insistent rumors, the launch of the Kindlephone, the device that is part smartphone and part ebook reader.
According to what the Wall Street Journal writes, Amazon is in fact seriously considering the idea of combining the purchase of the prestigious newspaper with the video reading of the contents associated with it by launching a smartphone - probably from the Kindle line - at zero cost, i.e. free for the end user. However, it is not clear how Amazon could, in the event, make a margin: according to insiders, could point to a subscription to the content - e-books, videos, music, now even WP - published by Amazon and probably exclusive to the smartphone.
Otherwise, it wouldn't be the first time that Amazon has sold at a loss: the company is indeed known for being a "loss leader": the same Kindle reader, on sale for $79, has a production cost of $84. A deadweight loss that Amazon recovers through the sale of exclusive e-books for the Kindle platform, and which has helped to spread the video player itself. Even the company's tablet, the Kindle Fire HD, is sold below cost: 207 dollars are needed to produce it, against a retail price of 199. But the strategy has also paid off in this case: Half of Android tablets in the US are Kindle Fires.
