How to Buy an Amazon Kindle in India - Buying Process, Price, Shipping and Customs Duty

While Indians make up one of the globe’s most tech-savvy people, unfortunately India does not figure high on the list of countries where the latest high-tech gadgets are introduced for retail. The Apple i-Pad is the latest case in point. However India and its people are fast to catch on worldwide technology trends and the growing popularity of the Amazon Kindle is proof of this.

Click here to visit the Official Kindle website for buying it from India.

A few tips on buying an Amazon Kindle in India.

About the Amazon Kindle

The Amazon Kindle is an e-reader or a device which enables the downloading and reading of electronic books and other digital media. Kindle, like Sony’s e-Reader, displays its content via electronic-paper display which is a new technology that creates a paper-like display for the electronic text. Developed by Amazon.com’s subsidiary Lab126, the Kindle is one of the most popular models among electronic readers at present. Books, newspapers, magazines and blogs are loaded onto the device wirelessly via Amazon’s free EVDO network (called WhisperNet) and are published in a proprietary format for the Kindle. Kindle owners can also send files to Amazon to be converted and published onto the Kindle, and access blogs, newspapers, websites, and web-based email through the Kindle’s browser.

Ordering the Kindle in India

The Amazon Kindle can be ordered directly from the website of the online retail giant, Amazon.com. While four hardware devices actually exist under the Kindle umbrella and are unofficially known as the Kindle, Kindle 2, Kindle 3 and Kindle DX, only two of the latest versions, the Kindle DX (Global Wireless) and Kindle (Global Wireless) are officially available to buyers over the Amazon website. The chief advantage of the Kindle Global Wireless over the regular versions is that the former can be used to browse through the Amazon bookstore and Wikipedia with the help of a free internet connection. This connection uses a mobile phone network and is prepaid by Amazon which means users need not pay any bills for the relevant searching.

Amazon Kindle pricing

On the Amazon website, Kindle (with Wi-Fi and 3G) is priced at $189 USD while the Kindle DX at $379 USD is priced almost twice as much. This is because the latter has a larger screen than its predecessors and is also the thinnest device till date. Other than that it comes with an accelerometer which allows users to seamlessly rotate between portrait and landscape orientations when the device is turned on its side. The Kindle DX is in fact being marketed as better suited to view content from newspapers and textbooks.

Buyers in India can expect to pay $378.57 (USD) for the Amazon Kindle. This estimate covers the cost of the device at $259.00, import duty of $98.59 as well as shipping and handling charges of $20.98. However check the website for the latest cost since the offers keep changing over time. Amazon allows payment for the Kindle through credit/debit card only and not through other online payment options like PayPal. However there are no other hidden charges for the buyer. You can use most credit cards or debit cards issued to you in India. Almost all Indian credit cards including those issued by ICICI, HDFC, Tata, SBI, HSBC, Kotak, Citibank are international credit cards and can be used on the internet. Amazon is a reputed merchant and you can use your credit card safely. Credit card transactions on the internet are permitted by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for most purposes including buying the Amazon Kindle.

Save money with the Kindle

If you're an avid reader of books, the Kindle will save you a lot of money in a short span of time. Almost all bestselling books are available in Kindle format for a fraction of their price in paperback. There are tens of thousands of free titles too available for instant download.

Shipping process for the Amazon Kindle to India

It takes a minimum of two full working days for the product to be shipped to India. Shipping may be delayed if holidays or weekends fall in between or if the buyer’s address lies further away from the major cities. As soon as a buyer completes a successful order at Amazon.com, he/she will get an email with the order details from ‘auto-confirm at amazon dot com’. Another email from ‘ship confirm at amazon dot com’ will follow upon the dispatch of the product for shipping and this will also include the tracking number to track the device in transit. The time lag between the completion of a successful order and the dispatch of the product for shipping is not more than twenty-four hours.

The Amazon Kindle package

Besides the Kindle device, a buyer in India can expect to find in the package a manual for getting started, a USB cable as well as a two-pin power adapter. The USB cable can be plugged into the power socket for charging through AC power. However since the power adapter comes in the US two-pin style, the user will need a U.S. to India power plug converter or alternatively can charge the Kindle using the laptop/PC and the USB cable. The wireless connection of the Kindle is supposed to work without any configuration. However if on the first attempt at searching through the Amazon Store with the wireless connection, the Kindle complains about “no connection”, one should follow the device’s suggestion to reboot. After a reboot, most likely the connection will be up and will keep working without any problems.

Browsing the Web using the Kindle

The Amazon Kindle is primarily a device for displaying electronic books. And even though it does have an in-built web browser for surfing text-only and low graphic websites, this facility is not allowed to users in India, at least for the present. If a user based in India attempts to browse the web or google a keyword, he/she will most likely be met with a browser error saying “Due to local restrictions, web browsing is not available for all countries”. However all users of Kindle Global Wireless, even from India, can use their device to search through Amazon’s Kindle e-bookstore and the Wikipedia. According to some reports, certain titles from the Amazon Kindle e-bookstore may be unavailable to users from India but as yet such reports are unverified.

Various uses of the Kindle

The Amazon Kindle can be used to read files in PDF as well. However since the device cannot zoom or enlarge the text or font size of a PDF file. Also a user can transfer and read his/her documents on Kindle. These may be in the .text, .pdf or .mobi format but must be supported by Kindle to enable the transfer on the device. With no news from Amazon about opening up retail options for its e-reader in India, ordering the device from the website remains the best option for Indians eager to get their own copy of the Kindle.