SAN FRANCISCO – Amazon and US bookstore giant Barnes & Noble cut the prices of their electronic book readers in the face of Apple’s iPad momentum in the fledgling market.
Amazon on Monday dropped the price of its Kindle e-reader to 189 dollars from 259 dollars.
The cheapest iPad, a multi-purpose tablet computer that features a color e-reader compared with the black-and-white “e-ink” Kindle devoted exclusively to digital books, costs 499 dollars.
Barnes & Noble said Monday it was lowering the price of the Nook with 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity to 199 dollars from 259 dollars.
Barnes & Noble also said it was introducing a Wi-Fi only version of the Nook for 149 dollars. Kindle has 3G wireless connectivity to allow users to quickly download digital books.
Barnes & Noble’s chief bookstore competitor, Borders, also offers an e-reader, the Kobo, for 150 dollars.
Apple has sold more than two million iPads since the touchscreen tablet computer went on sale in the United States in early April and in nine other countries late last month.
Amazon touts Kindle as the top selling item at the powerhouse online retailer, but Amazon and Barnes & Noble do not release sales figures for their e-readers.
