Kindle to be sold at Target? By Apr 25? Best Buy? Update1

Engadget's Nilay Patel is reporting that The Amazon Kindle may actually be available at Target stores come April 25.  MAJOR news if true.

Patel writes: "We've always wondered if and when Amazon would get the Kindle into brick-and-mortar stores to counteract the see-it-with-your-eyes marketing advantage held by competitors like Barnes and Noble, and it looks like we just got our answer -- this is a shot of a Target inventory handheld showing a listing for Amazon's e-reader.

We're told that the in-store date is April 25, so we'll be keeping an eye out -- and we're definitely curious to see if Amazon's retail packaging for stores is any flashier than the current Kindle box. "

Engadget thanks "zeroleonheart" - I hope that's a very good source :-).

UPDATE1 - 4/8/10 - Original posting 4/7/10, 1:42 PM

Now, Engadget's Nilay Patel has a story on the Nook being sold at Best Buy, which makes sense since the forever-delayed iRex DR800SG e-reader was due to use Barnes and Noble's online e-bookstore but be sold at Best Buy (where the price tag had been set for $445 before iRex did the first of several postponements).


KINDLE AT BEST BUY? as well as the Nook?
A long-time commenter at Engadget, David Wixom has posted that he is an employee of Best Buy (sells cameras there) and says today that:

  "I have a feeling we are going to start selling the Kindle at Best Buy as well seeing as we just got cases for them in on the truck today.  I find it hard to believe we will sell cases for a product we don't sell."

  My impression is that the comment is genuine (not rumor-mongering), as he identifies himself, unlike the bulk of anonymous posters -- although it's hard to know what the boxes might be about.  It's strange to think of the Kindle selling at Best Buy for some reason. David also has some really nice photo galleries up at http://davidwixom.smugmug.com, one of the best photo sites around.

  UPDATE - 5/12/10 - Since the above at Best Buy did not materialize at this point, I think that someone or David referred to "cases for them" referring to them as "Kindle" in a generic way for an e-reader device, in this case the Nook, since that was exactly when the Nooks were arriving. [See update in next paragraph.]

  FURTHER UPDATE - There was a post in the Amazon Kindle forums on June 13 from tigerbeat who wrote that when people were unable to find Kindles at Target for some time:

"Best Buy even had a Kindle cover and they don't even sell Kindles."

so David wasn't mistaken there.

  I have seen forum posts referring to seeing some "Kindles" at stores in the past, and that these were "Kindles made by Sony" ! -- but the Kindle has become a sort of generic word in the way "kleenex" or "xerox" have.

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