Amazon’s Kindle lineup has wasted away to practically nothing over the past month or so; most models are out of stock, and in some regions Kindles are no longer available to purchase at all.
With Prime Day part 2 coming up tomorrow, people are expecting Kindles to go on sale like they always do during Amazon’s sales events, but this year it looks like most Kindles aren’t going to be available at all, unless Amazon is holding back stock specifically for the Prime Big Deals Day sale.
Things keep going from bad to worse. The base Kindle has been out of stock just about everywhere for the past month. Now the Signature Edition Paperwhite is gone too.
For the past few weeks, the only version of the Kindle Scribe available has been the 16GB model with the basic stylus. The 32GB version, the 64GB version, and the 16GB version with the premium stylus are all gone.
As of this writing, the only Kindles that are left on Amazon’s US website are the 16GB Kindle Paperwhite in black, the 16GB Kindle Scribe with the basic pen, along with some bundle packages for each, and the Kindle Paperwhite kids bundle. That’s it.
All the colored options are gone. The agave green and blue denim Kindle Paperwhites have been unavailable for a while now. The black Signature Edition model has been in stock in lately, but now it’s unavailable too, although it comes back in stock occasionally.
The Kindle lineup hasn’t been this sparse in a long time.
Amazon is expected to release new Kindles soon, so that can explain part of the reason for the sudden Kindle shortage, but there must’ve been a delay with the release for things to get this bad.
It’ll be interesting to see what Amazon does for Prime Day tomorrow regarding Kindle sales considering they have practically none left. Including the kids versions, there are 5 different options for the base Kindle and all are gone. There are 6 different versions of the Kindle Paperwhite with the SE model and various colors, and only one of those is left. There are 4 versions of the Kindle Scribe and there’s only one version of it left too.
On the plus side, all 3 versions of the Kindle Paperwhite kids are still available. The thing about that is they’re already on sale for $55 off at $115, and a Prime membership isn’t required, so the price isn’t going to go any lower for Prime Day.
It shows they care.
Wow. Amazon sold out and not restocking their flagship e-readers is not a good look or a good sign.
The only Kindle I found in stock was a black Kindle Paperwhite with ads supported.
In Canada today, only the Scribe is available.
Maybe they’re holding off on releasing new models for the holidays?
What my Ouija board is predicting is ..
Based upon the funky version numbers recently for the Kindle firmware, Amazon is working on some new functionality. The Ouija board isn’t saying if the new functionality is major or minor, just that it needs more horsepower than the older Kindles have. So, we get a refresh of the older/lower end Kindles, a smidge more hardware functionality (maybe the newer e-Ink screens, if they are cost effective) but beefier CPUs.
Amazon predicted when the new software would be ready.They started cycling down inventory and tentatively scheduled a release date for the new hardware when they thought the software would be ready. Of course like all good software projects the new software is running behind schedule and wasn’t ready to meet that tentative date.
Amazon now has a couple of options, to release the new hardware with only minor hardware upgrades running the old firmware. Receiving a big Yawn from customers and the press. Or reschedule the release date, hoping they can finish the software in time before the Christmas sale season disappears. Or (most probable) they will release the new hardware, demo the new software with a bunch of “Coming Real Soon” disclaimers.
All I know is hubby piped up the other day about needing new cases for both his iPad and his Kindle Oasis 2 and I was happy to see that Amazon had a genuine Oasis case in LEATHER on sale! It arrived yesterday. So hubby now has a lovely leather case for his Kindle in merlot and he seems very happy with the case and the color. It looks and feels great!
Neither of us needs a new Kindle device yet, both our 2017 Oasis models are still working fine. With luck, we’ve got 3-5 years more with them before the battery goes, but who knows?
So if they are selling out old stock, it benefitted me, but I agree, having so few devices in stock is not a good look.
All we have here in Mexico is the signature Kindle. Everything else is out. And they never released the Scribe in Mexico. You can find the Scribe in a competing webpage.
Apparently they never released the Scribe in a lot of places. I saw this on Amazon: Kindle Scribe is sold in the United States, Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Amazon is about to start prime day without any kindles available 🤦🏻♂️
Maybe Amazon is going to launch the new Kindles during Prime Days? One explaination as to why they dont have much of a catalogue right now if they want you to buy the new 25% brighter backlight Kindle Basic.
Prime day is tomorrow
https://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/1fxypxx/2024_kindle_release_australia/
Some more rumors of kindle devices sitting at retailers warehouse in Australia. They are rumored to be released on Friday.