We were wondering how Kindle's
impending active content (read: apps) would be harnessing that free Whispernet bandwidth. As it turns out, there's just a smidgen allowed for
gratis. According to the terms laid out by Amazon, there's a 70 / 30 revenue split, with that smaller percentage going to Bezos and co. "net of delivery fees of $0.15 / MB." The price tiers is a little simpler: apps can be free if their download over 3G is less than 1MB and they use less than 100KB per month, per user. Apps between 1MB and 10MB require a one-time purchase fee that offsets the bandwidth usage, and likewise a subscription fee is needed for those that plan on allowing over 100KB of a monthly data streaming. (To put that in perspective, this post -- just the copy -- is 4KB. That image above is 120KB.) Anything over 10MB requires a download over WiFi, and the maximum file size is 100MB... and if anyone manages to justify a 100MB app that runs on a greyscale E Ink display, color us impressed.
posted January 22nd 2010 9:17PM
Well that sucks...
@RockNStuff
As long as it does not suck data!
@NAME
*gives beer*
So now it's me, the developer, who has to pay for the user's bandwidth? WTF??? Screw amazon and their idiotic idea!!!
"Anything over 10MB requires a download over WiFi"
hmmm... does this mean kindle will be getting wifi?
@laxic
Nope. And neither DF nor the original press release by Amazon mention WiFi either.
$0.15/MB sounds completely reasonable. Verizon's $1.99/MB on the other hand...
@Shadow08 Verizon charges developers $2/MB for what their apps use? That is crazy.
@dogcow No.... sadly. NOT developers- their customers ><
That's why I'm switching to an unlimited data plan ASAP. (Don't worry, I don't have a smartphone (yet) so I haven't been charged $1,525,825 dollars for internet). Although, Verizon REALLY should offer better plans.
@Special Agent Steve
ok. Well, Amazon is charging their developers .15/MB/month for what their users download over 100KB/month, from what I can tell, on top of the 30%/70% arrangement.
Is this the first leak for a Kindle 3???
100KB a month? That's like bragging about a free milliliter of petrol every month with purchase of a car.
@Alex Not if your app is a stock ticker, or the weather, or a text RSS reader, or a story/novella mini-series, ect. This is a Kindle, not an internet tablet or an iPhone. I can't really see the apps being all that crazy guys.
@Luxury Guy
"I can't really see the apps being all that crazy guys."
Way to rain on the parade there bud ;)
But it disqualifies any Twitter, Facebook or other social network app.
@Luxury Guy Have fun RSS. For example "the Daring Fireball RSS feed at this moment is 115 KB"
@Luxury Guy
a text RSS feed would, in fact, be crazy. That engadget post is 4k. So 25 engadget posts and you've used your 100K/month allocation for that user...anything above that you are footing the bill for what he downloads. Let's say he has just 10 more feeds just like it...that would be 1 meg/day? $3.50/month? Per user? That you, the developer pay every month?
How would you go about charging for that app? Given that Amazon is also taking 30%. For a simple text RSS reader?
(feel free to correct my math, I'm sure I suck at it)
@dogcow Methinks Amazon has just created a goldmine.
@(Unverified)
Except nobody nowadays will sign up to become a miner for them.
I don't see the point of bogging down something like this with a bunch of apps, that's what our cell phones are for.
this is why they should have stayed with Sprint's network
"... color us impressed."
I see what you did there.
So does this mean the Kindle 3 will have Wifi? And a screen that can be constantly refreshed with only a small amount of drain on the battery?
@DustoMan
WiFi? Nope, read the actual KDK web site instead of egadget's "interpretation" of it.
"Applications larger than 10MB will not be delivered wirelessly but can be downloaded from the Kindle Store to a computer and transferred to the user's Kindle via USB."
my head hurts but ok
And suddenly, my decision about what book reader to buy just got a lot clearer (hint: it's not Kindle).
By the way, in case anyone thinks that statement ludicrous, something like this is simply enough to sway my decision in a market with an over-saturation of devices with similar, if not identical, feature sets. This is a convoluted mess I'd rather not deal with. Either make the bandwidth free, or limit it to running apps that use minimal enough bandwidth to satisfy the overprotective cellular service providers.
@KupoCheer : How much free cellular bandwidth do you get with other devices?
@radarskiy
How much does an ereader need to have that?
WOW, a whole 100kb huh, hold me down while I compress some isht to fit the free data bill for these dongles.
So essentially this is an SDK for crosswords and sudoku puzzles, as this is literally the only things this'll be used for? Expect them to be added to Kindle editions of newspapers then! And a Kindle edition of the Puzzler!
The Kindle is not for Pron
> this post -- just the copy -- is 4KB
Ummm... no way. 1 byte = 1 (english) character. 4KB = 4,000 characters. This post is probably 1000 characters at most. Or are you including the HTML too, all the way from the start of the title to the end of your tags? If so I think that's a bit misleading. Obviously reading this post over a mobile-optimized experience would reduce the size quite a bit, especially when taking gzip compression into account.
@schammy
986 bytes on that post.
+70 for the headline.
So good estimate there!
@schammy
Is it because of the file system? I think the smallest possible file size on NTFS is 4 kB.
The demoscene community could make a Crysis clone under 90KB.