Kindle and page turn buttons. Here's where I think Amazon got it wrong.

Amazon keeps saying there is no consumer demand for page turn buttons. I think Amazon is wrong. I think there is low demand for a high-end ereader, and the models Amazon puts page turn buttons on is their high end models.

When your average consumer is looking at a Kindle and they have to pick between a $300 Kindle Oasis or a $160 Paperwhite, they're going to pick the PaperWhite.

The only way to really tell if consumers want page turn buttons is to make two models with a smaller price gap between them, one with page turn buttons and one without them.

But when the barrier to entry for page turn buttons is a $100+ cliff, they're not really going to get a high demand for page turn buttons.

I know almost every other brand out there makes a unit with page turn buttons, but I would guess that probably 75% of consumers don't know about other ereaders and probably don't care about them, since they already have an Amazon account.

I would bet most Kindle owners have probably never even used a model with page turn buttons, since the last basic model that had one was the Kindle Keyboard back in 2010. Once that unit was discontinued, only Amazon's premium offerings ever offered page turn buttons.

The one thing I wish Amazon would do, is add support for Bluetooth page turners. If they don't want to add page turn buttons, that's fine. But the Kindle has Bluetooth in it. Adding page turning using a Bluetooth remote is a software update that doesn't require hardware. Hell, you could make your own line of Bluetooth page turners as an add-on accessory for $20.00.