Well Done, Amazon! Kindle Is Welcomed in Russia

Today is the day marking the beginning of international expansion of Amazon Kindle e-book reader. Amazon sends products to various countries around the world but for some countries the list of available products is only limited to books and CDs or DVDs. Starting today Kindle is entered on the list of available gadgets for 100 countries globally, including Russia where I live and can witness the reaction myself.

This decision is obviously good at least because I personally don’t like any limitations and opening yet another window to the huge Russian market is hopefully a wise decision for Amazon. But unfortunately there are some dubious things about this entire idea.

One such thing is that there will be virtually no Russian-language content on Kindle at all - as Amazon is planning to keep selling the same assortment of books and newspapers/magazines that are available to the users in the US. So this means that while Russian users will be able to consume all types of content for Kindle with the exception for blogs and some experimental services, the content will still be largely limited to people who want to read in the language that is not native to them.

And while the limitation regarding blogs is promised to be eliminated eventually, availability of Russian-language books on Kindle will mean cooperation with some local partner to provide the titles that will be appealing enough to buy for the Russian users as well - and I can imagine copyright issues will be a real nightmare so Amazon will probably try to stay away from them.

But anyway this approach means that Amazon is planning to target a tiny portion of the population of Russia - only those people who are willing to consume English-language content or foreigners living in Russia. But anyway this is a very small number of people though I expect buying a Kindle makes sense to people outside of Moscow where foreign-language books are rarely available at all - as they could want to buy Kindle to learn or polish their English.

But anyway the best part about the entire expansion idea is that Amazon is not increasing the price for international users versus those people in the US enjoy. So we’ll basically have to pay taxes and shipping price (which is pretty obvious and should be expected anyway) and get the device at the price that is comparable to the price for people in the US.

This is more than reasonable given that normally we in Russia expect much higher prices for electronics than those available to the people in the US or Europe. But the problem is that this price will hardly guarantee sales of Kindle here at all - it is just appealing that Amazon is willing to sell directly to local consumers without ridiculous price increases.

At the same time I myself suspect that the vast majority of the population of Russia has no idea what Kindle is at all and have never heard the name. What’s even worse, I have strong doubts that there are enough people here who would want to read their books or magazines electronically - let alone English-language titles.

The interesting part is that one of the leading local mobile carriers is reportedly negotiating (text in Russian) with Amazon an exclusive deal to sell 20 thousand e-readers in Russia annually. But unlike sending Kindle directly to Russian customers by mail, such an arrangement will make Amazon deal with all the difficulties related to interface and documentation translation into Russian as well as arrange for local support - and this is hardly something Amazon is very much willing to do.

And I myself really hope that Amazon will keep sending Kindles directly to Russia even if they do enter a deal with a local representative - simply because I know that any exclusive deal in Russia will mean unbelievably high prices that no one in their right mind will be willing to pay for a gadget like Kindle which is hardly a necessity.

But anyway I think that Amazon is doing everything right in general now that they are shipping Kindles to Russia - and adding Russian-language titles could be done later if they see enough demand from the local audience. And now that we see this arrangement, I can’t help but wonder if other manufacturers could be willing to follow with similar initiatives and we’ll see gadgets like iPhone or iPod Touch shipping to Russia at a price comparable to that for the US instead of many times higher. I hardly believe it could be possible but I will at least hope it could - simply because it feels better when you know international manufacturers are willing to consider you a normal customer instead of some odd international user.

Via (in Russian)