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Quick thoughts on a bunch of Amazon news that rolled through Reader recently (still in major move mode here in the 11211).

Last week Amazon started distancing itself from the 240k Kindles sold number that had been making the rounds. It seems like that looks like an overestimation of the numbers, although, Amazon’s statement was vague enough that who knows. Still, calling them “extremely high numbers” tends to make you think that they sold less.

Nevertheless, I believe that Kindle is doing quite well, certainly better than anyone (including Amazon) most likely expected. It’s been pretty much in the top slot of the electronics bestsellers since it debuted and that means something. With over 4k reviews and an average of 4 stars, the people who get them like them.

Everyone’s waiting for the next model to hit. So now the rumor is that Frog Design is helping out this time around. If that proves true, that is great news for the Kindle. It’s also a really interesting move for Amazon since Frog was a very public critic of the design of Kindle 1.0. (my thoughts on Frog’s critique)

The rumors of 2.0 are pretty thick, with the fancy Frog version, slimmer and lighter as well as a larger collegiate version. And with Amazon’s new $100 off offer (with signup for a credit card) – could they be trying to clear their inventory of old 1.0’s to make room for the new ones this holiday season?

Of course on the heels of all this is the near obligatory suggestion to Amazon about how to run their business if they really want to be successful. TechCrunch trots out the ol’ license the software to a bunch of hardware makers so they can sell it for cheap! Wow, because that worked out so well for Palm. Wait, no it didn’t. And Apple, too. What? No that didn’t work either. Who did this model ever work for besides Microsoft? Why does no one tell Sony to license the PS3 OS? Or tell Apple to license the iPhone OS? Or tell Microsoft to sell the Zune OS? Or the XBox OS?

All Amazon needs to do is get prices lower. They can slash their margins on the device, maybe even sell it for a loss (don’t the consoles do that? Initially they sell for a loss but eventually the hardware gets cheap enough that that stops?). Because the ebook market doesn’t really exist it’s definitely true that Amazon needs to get more devices out there, a lot more. Making the devices cheaper is the way to go with that, hopefully Kindle 2.0 will see better UI on a cheaper device.