When bargain hounds opened their Amazon Deal of the Day email this morning, they were met with a bargain basement Kindle DX. Amazon's black sheep 10-inch e-ink tablet is $110 off today, a 29% discount. It's the kind of deal you offer when you want to clear out inventory, fast.
The DX isn't competitive in an iPad world. It never has been. But you know what would be? A 10-inch Kindle Fire. You know, like the one that's been rumored for months.
Consider the context: The DX has long been neglected, ignored even, by Amazon. And rightly so. First introduced in 2009, the DX has gotten a single, largely meaningless update since. It's received no promotional support, despite Amazon's obviously healthy marketing budget. Any relevance it had was severely hampered by the introduction of the iPad, and was obliterated when Apple decided to get into the textbook business.
So clearly Amazon's trying to unload a product it doesn't want to support any more. In fact, it hasn't supported the DX in two years. So why clear them out now? Because all those 10-inch Kindle DX boxes are taking up valuable shelf space, especially when there are 10-inch LCD models coming in to replace it.
And it's not just the DX. Every single Lightning Deal today is Kindle-related: cases, speaker docks, sleeves. Sixteen deals in all, a waterfall of discounts. It's a fire sale, if you'll pardon the pun. All of those accessories will presumably still be compatible with an updated 7-inch Kindle Fire, sure. But Amazon won't need nearly as many of them if its market is split between two sizes.
