Amazon Kindle DX out of stock
Amazon.com yesterday trumpeted that December is already its best sales month ever for its Kindle electronic readers, and tried to further juice sales with a free shipping offer on its $259 basic Kindle. But the company has also quietly run out of its other reader, the large-screen Kindle DX.
Context & Ripple Effects
The large-screen Kindle DX has only been on the market since June 2009, when reviewers weighed its supersized screen against its supersized price. Now, mid-holiday-shopping-season, it has quietly vanished from Amazon's shelves even as the company claims December is already its best Kindle sales month ever and sweetens the $259 basic model with free shipping.
There is a precedent for what happens next: when the original Kindle sold out in December 2007, units fetched up to $1,500 on eBay. With no syndicated pickup or public reaction yet recorded on this stockout, the open question is whether the DX follows the same scalper path or simply cedes sales to the cheaper model Amazon is actively promoting.
First-order effects
- Holiday shoppers wanting the large-screen DX right now have nowhere to buy it from Amazon directly, redirecting gift demand toward the $259 basic Kindle that Amazon is pushing with free shipping.
Second-order effects
- A resale premium is likely to re-emerge on eBay, repeating the pattern from the December 2007 Kindle sellout, with third-party sellers capturing margin Amazon leaves on the table.
Third-order effects
- If every holiday season produces a Kindle sellout, Amazon's constraint shifts from stimulating demand to e-reader manufacturing capacity, and the product line stratifies into a volume model and an undersupplied premium model.
The trend: E-reader demand is repeatedly outrunning holiday supply, turning Amazon's annual Kindle stockouts into a recurring fixture that feeds secondary-market premiums.