Something has happened to the Kindle Keyboards. They are slowly starting to disappear. About a month ago, Amazon stopped selling the $99 Kindle Keyboard, the one with special offers. And now they’ve run out of the $139 WiFi-only Kindle Keyboard as well. Both are only available used.
Amazon still has both 3G keyboard models available in both black and white, but it makes you wonder if they are going to be getting more in stock or if they’re going to start phasing the Kindle Keyboards out entirely now that the new models have arrived.
Maybe they’ll keep the 3G keyboard models around…or maybe not. It could be they just had more of them and haven’t run out yet.
It’s hard to imagine Amazon dropping the keyboard Kindles altogether, even though that’s how it usually works when companies introduce new models. But the keyboard has been such a fixture of the Kindle brand, and all the Kindle games and active content were designed for it—only a fraction of which work on the new Kindles.
Plus there’s the fact the Kindle Keyboard offers features neither of the new Kindles have. Unlike the Kindle Touch, it has free 3G web browsing and it offers screen rotation and in-book Wikipedia and Google search.
Also, the Kindle Touch is only sold in the US right now, leaving lots of potential buyers out of the mix. The Kindle 4 is sold internationally, but there’s no 3G model and the on-screen keyboard is tedious to use for typing notes.
Amazon will likely start selling the Kindle Touch internationally in a month or two. But the question remains: will they start phasing out the Kindle Keyboards altogether? Or will they continue to keep them around for a while longer?
“Where Have All the WiFi Kindle Keyboards Gone?”
Taken husbands every one
Song Lyric from the song WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE
Hi Nathan,
just checked the sole Kindle retailer in New Zealand and they do not have any Wifi Keyboard Kindles left in stock – only the 3G Keyboard Kindles.
Paul
Oh Kindle Keyboard. I will never forget the first time I saw you. You looked so interesting, beautiful and new. You changed the way I thought about publishing and opened up a world of free literature. You forever changed the way I read books. Your keyboard was so easy to use and had lots of fun shortcuts. I will always love you the best.
You will be missed…
Perhaps Amazon realised how shoddily made they were and are phasing them out. I had to send 5 Kindles back for this reason. I bought a Sony PRS-T1 instead, a superior ebook reader.
If they take away the keyboard version, then they’ll give space for their competitors to offer something like this.
I hope mine lasts a loooong time…’love’ my Kindle with it’s cute littel keyboard 😉
An eReader is mostly for reading, not to play games or surf the net etc., If one wants to do the later, of course there are the touch pads etc., With time, other creative eReader accessories are expected. However, most will face the same fate.
I was deciding between the $99 Kindle keyboard and the Kindle Touch when the keyboards disappeared from the Amazon website. But then I found your blog and after I read over all your reviews, Nathan, I decided on the Sony PRS-T1 which I bought the week before Christmas and am very happy with it. It is my first ereader. Thank you for all you put into your blog and website, it has been so helpful for me to learn everything I need to know about the world of ereaders.
Hi, Nathan…bought a 3G Kindle with Keyboard online through Amazon about 3 weeks ago and I like it a lot except it’s hard to not accidentally hit the page forward and back buttons.
I didn’t want to get the Sony e-reader when one of the negative things you said about it was that it can’t show texts that’s in italics.
Happy New Year!
I never said the PRS-T1 doesn’t support italics because it does. I said sometimes when changing from the default font it doesn’t do italics. I think Sony even mentions it as a bug in the manual.