No Kindle for Kiwis

07 October 2009 · 2 comments

Worldwide-ish Kindles come to town — but not to New Zealand!

Kindle.

Kindle.

In a rather bizarre twist it seems our neighbours in Samoa, Niue, Tonga and yes, even that big island off to the West, Australia, will be able to buy and use Kindle ebook readers before long, but here in New Zealand, we won’t:

We are excited to now ship Kindle to Samoa.

We are excited to now ship Kindle to Niue.

We are excited to now ship Kindle to Tonga.

We are excited to now ship Kindle to Australia.

Unfortunately, we are currently unable to ship Kindles or offer Kindle content in New Zealand.

Why? There’s no explanation about why we’re being left out.

OK, so I can’t afford a Kindle anyway, but with all the hullaballoo about it, and the rave reviews from some users, it’d be nice to think I could at least have the option of buying it.

I’ve emailed the Amazon PR department to ask what the reasoning is. If I receive a reply I’ll update this post.

Update: I had a very speedy response to my query. Here it is in full:

Hi Miraz,

Thanks for your interest in Kindle! We want to ship Kindle everywhere and we’re working on it.

We are making a portable reader with wireless access to a global catalogue of books available in over 100 countries around the world. This is an audacious first step, and we will continue to innovate on behalf of our customers and expand our offerings — we know that there will be other steps, but we’re happy with where we are starting and we think our customers will be too.

Thanks,
Stephanie

2 comments

Tagged as: ebooks, kindle, reader

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hellonearthis 08 October 2009 at 07:34 30

But Amazon and their customers are happy.
Happy that NZ can’t be apart of the Kindle or customers of Amazon.

Is NZ the have nots, to boots the appeal of the Kindle haves.

New PR slogan. Kindle, at least we are not in NZ

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Pappito 08 October 2009 at 11:57 01

Hm… I have a sony prs-505 ‘couse the kindle worths nothing more w/o the whispernet (or equivalent wireless connection).

But with the wireless, free connection, the Kindle 2 is the best e-ink ebook reader device on the market.

It is a shame to not put NZ into the first 100.

Don’t be offended samoans (Talofa to you all!), but compare the market size and infrastructure and etc…!

I thought I am living in a developed country – wich is visible from the Amazon HQ…

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