Amazon Kindle Touch now available through international Amazon stores
Amazon’s worldwide operation concept is what you might call not very good. Basically you have the main US store as well as stores in key European countries, all of which will provide all its products to the country it’s in in and some products to any other country. The Kindle Touch has been available to purchase from the US store for international customers since it came out, but the European local Amazon stores haven’t offered it until now. Basically that means that instead of importing one from the US, customers in the UK, Spain, Italy, and Germany can now buy one from their local Amazon store. This deals away with long shipping times, import taxes, European law-specific warranty issues and so on, but also comes with a price in n euro and pounds that is higher than just buying it from the US, shipping and import taxes not included.
For those hoping for a Kindle Fire though, that one still isn’t available through either method. The Fire depends on content sales to be profitable at all, and so shipping it to countries that can’t use some/any of the services that make Amazon money is not a smart move by Amazon. The US is a big market and Amazon is doing quite well by keeping most of its products and services contained to that country, but on the other hand, companies like Microsoft and Apple would never have been so successful if they had done the same.
[BBC]
