Any idea if they still sell well compared to the ad-free ones? Presumably if they were that successful we'd have seen other manufactures copying the idea before now, right?
We have. You can buy cheap-ass smartphones at Walmart, etc with ads baked into the OS. Lots of my folks are pretty broke living down in Louisiana and have them. If you need a phone cheap, say for example you can't afford a real phone and you're planning to sell some drugs, they're some of the cheapest usable phones you can get.
you'd be surprised at how many people look for lowest price and fail to read even part of the rest of the item's page below the item title at the top.
kindle. check.
lowest price. check.
buy now.
click-click-done.
(oops. they just got a 'trial' to prime, too. that takes actual reading of pages to find and click-through the cancel process before the payments start)