For the past week or so, readers have been emailing Kindle Nation Daily, asking if Amazon would put the Kindle DX on sale for Black Friday.
Well, we have an answer: YES!
Amazon didn’t even wait until Black Friday. From now through Monday, November 28, the Kindle DX price has been reduced from 379 to just $259. (Click here to see it on Amazon.)
It seems obvious that this Black Friday deal amounts to the Farewell Tour for the Kindle DX, for a number of reasons, but Amazon’s experience with the Kindle DX may also provide the company with its own perspective on the ideal form factor for the Kindle Fire tablet.
Various Kindle models occupy most of the best seats on Amazon’s electronics bestseller list — #1, #2, #3, #5, #8, #10, #13, #14, #17 — but the Kindle DX has fallen all the way out of the Top 100. Lately it has suffered from weak support and vanishing software updates from Amazon, but the truth is that this most tablet-like of the eInk Kindles never caught on as a mass-market product due to price (initially $489, then $379, now $259), weight (18.9 ounces), and a failed effort to make it the device of choice for students and some professionals.
I got my Kindle DX the day it shipped, and there were some things I loved about it, but they didn’t outweigh the weight of the device, and I ended up selling my DX on eBay.
I’d be surprised to see Amazon come out with another DX-like product, at least until the advance of technology allows some sort of hybrid display that allows users to toggle back and forth between eInk and color.
But one thing this Kindle DX price cut does is provide some context for the far more successful Kindle Fire launch. I’ve found it interesting that some critics have 
claimed that the Kindle Fire tablet will fail because, they say, it’s a “tweener” device stuck between the “ideal” form factors of the 6″ dedicated eInk ereaders such as the Kindle and Nook and the 10″ iPad tablets.
My take is a little different. Having used the Kindle Fire for the past week, I’m convinced that its balance of 14.6-ounce weight and 6-inch display size is the ideal form factor for personal solo viewing of movies and TV shows and reading of magazines, newspapers, ebooks, and more. There are still some important things to fix or improve with the Fire, but a 9- or 10-inch display is not the answer.
So I’m ready now for the second time to sell a 10″ display device on eBay, and this time it will be an iPad. While I do expect Amazon eventually to come out with a 9″ Kindle Fire tablet, I wouldn’t rush it. It would be smarter for Amazon, having already gone to school on the failure of the Kindle DX, to invest its resources in perfect the sub-$200 6-inch Kindle Fire. That’s the device that is spanking the rest of the tablet market right now, and its advantage may not be price alone.
I’m envisioning a commercial that would be too snarky for Amazon ever to make, where one consumer is looking at another’s Kindle Fire and saying “Yeah, it’s awesome, but I’m just not sure it’s big and heavy enough for me.”