Amazon Considered Subscription Plans for Kindle

You know what they say. Be careful what you wish for. Since last year, I have been talking about the need for Amazon to offer alternative pricing plans to consumers. The more choices we consumers have, the better off we are. It seems Amazon did consider introducing such a subscription plan and decided not to go in that route (for now). Here is what Jeff Bezos had to say:

We’re willing to offer choice and if customers want , I don’t see any difficulty with doing that, but I like the cognitive simplicity of the current model

While that’s great news coming from Jeff, I doubt many people would be interested in paying $60 a month for a wireless plan. You are easily going to pay more than $490 [Kindle DX’s current price] in your first year. Many have complained about Kindle being too expensive, but I doubt they’ll be complaining now that Jeff is putting the subscription model on the table.

I do believe that Amazon will eventually go into that route. The one time fee model will only get Amazon so far. The company is expected to introduce a lot of new features with Kindle 3.0 next year, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that device came with a subscription plan. As Amazon attracts more Kindle owners, it is going to have to charge to keep Sprint satisfied with the whole deal. Considering that people use their wireless service to do all kinds of things on their Kindle, Amazon needs to find a way to reduce the load on the network and offset the costs. Introducing a wireless and subscription fees is one way to do that, so don’t be surprised if Amazon moved in that direction by the end of 2009.

Your take: would you be interested in paying $60 a month for a Kindle wireless plan if Kindle was offered to you for free?