Amazon just launched the Kindle Paperwhite in India, which is interesting considering Amazon had stopped selling Kindles in India a while ago for some reason.
Now the Kindle Paperwhite is back, and the odd thing is it’s the only model that Amazon is selling in India. The Kindle Colorsoft still isn’t available there, and neither is the basic Kindle or the Kindle Scribe.
Plus they’re only selling the base 16GB version of the 12th gen Paperwhite, not the upgraded Signature Edition model, and Amazon is only selling the black version—the pink and green variants are mysteriously absent, but they are selling the pink and green versions of the official fabric cover, along with a black cover.
The list price of the Kindle Paperwhite in India is ₹21,999, but Amazon is currently selling it for ₹16,999, which is equivalent to about $200 USD. There isn’t an ad-supported model so it’s priced about $20 higher than the equivalent version that Amazon sells from their US website.
The Kobo Clara Colour is also selling for ₹16,999 on the Amazon India website, and the Kobo Clara BW is currently going for ₹14,999, so the prices are similar.
The 12th gen Kindle Paperwhite was released over 6 months ago in the US and other parts of the world, so this is a later release than usual, but at least Amazon has started selling a Kindle in India again. Maybe they’ll add some more models down the line. It’s weird how they decided to sell the Paperwhite but not the cheaper basic Kindle that was released at the same time. I can see the Colorsoft and Scribe maybe being too expensive for the market, but not selling the basic Kindle in India is just odd.
This might be due to some sort of local production requirement (common in India), and Amazon just went with the model they expect to sell the best.