After Kobo, Pocketbook has now announced a hike in the prices of its e-reader devices in the US. As the e-Book Reader Blog stated, buyers of several Pocketbook e-reader devices will have to shell out an additional $10 when buying from the company’s official Amazon store.
Specifically, models such as the Pocketbook Basic Lux 4, the Pocketbook Era Color, the InkPad Color 3, the Pocketbook Verse, and the Verse Pro are all now $10 more expensive. The price of the Pocketbook InkPad 4 has gone up by $20 while the InkPad Lite is now costlier by $30. Prices of all other models has been kept unchanged though there is no guarantee that will remain the same.
The company has not cited any reasons for the price hike and hasn’t stated either if there is any likelihood of it getting rolled back sometime in the future. Previously, we have seen Kobo announcing a price hike of its e-reader device, with each model now being costlier by $10. Interestingly, Onyx Boox too had hiked the prices of several of its e-reader and e-note devices though in a rare gesture, they have since been rolled back to their original prices.
With this being the current state of affairs, Amazon and B&N happen to be among the major e-reader manufacturers that have stuck with the original prices of their devices. None of the companies have dropped any hint of resorting to a price hike for any of its devices in the future. Amazon seems to be the only company that has the scale to absorb any rise in input costs.
In any case, keeping the price low happens to be a tried and tested marketing strategy at Amazon, even if that leads to loses initially. They aim to make up for that from the sale of content via the Kindle Store. B&N too doesn’t seem likely to resort to a price hike given that most of its models have already started to look dated.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.