Thursday, October 8, 2009

Kiwis can't get Kindle...yet

Want an Amazon Kindle and live in Zimbabwe? No problem!

Want an Amazon Kindle and live in New Zealand? Sorry, no can do.

New Zealand tech-heads were one of the unlucky ones in the recent Amazon announcement of an international version of its much vaunted e-book reader. Available from this Monday in 169 countries, other countries to have missed out include the potentially lucrative markets of Canada and China.

But all is not lost.

Today the NBR is reporting cellphone carrier Vodafone and its telecommunications rival Telecom are in talks to bring Kindle to New Zealand.

Telecom spokesperson Rebecca Earl told NBR: “We can see the appeal of the Kindle and are looking into our options for a device of this type, there are content considerations also and for this reason it’s too soon to comment further.”

Vodafone would not comment other than to confirm it is in talks with Amazon.


So...if Kindle comes to Aotearoa, would you be tempted to buy one? Maybe you are an international reader of wellreadkitty and already have one - if so, what do you think? Would you recommend it? I'd love to hear your views.


2 comments:

Heather said...

I may well be able to have one here (no idea!) but I wouldnt do it. It is nothing to do with cost or ease of deliver and everything to do with how I feel when I lay back in bed with a good book. I need paper pages to turn!

tosca said...

Hi, I would definitely buy one. To date am using a number of other gadgets (laptop, desktop, iPod touch and blackberry) but holding out hope for the Kindle. Was in New Orleans earlier this year on holiday and sat next to a young man at the airport who had a Kindle and kindly let me play with it. I want one so badly! Currently I have a lot of ebooks in various formats: Mobipocket, pdf, doc and lit depending on what I read them on. I buy ebooks for the moments when my public library (where I work) doesn't hold the wide variety of fiction I want to read :)