Amazon.com's new Kindle DX has raised some eyebrows with its $489 price tag. Today Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos defended that cost, though he admitted to toying with a cellphone-style pricing model that would have made the device cheaper but required subscriptions or other fees.

Here's a writeup of Bezos' comments at Wired magazine's Disruptive by Design conference, from the New York Times:

He said the company did consider selling the Kindle with a lower upfront price, but requiring a monthly subscription or minimum number of books purchased.

“My opinion, and so far the market has responded to our approach, is very simple,” he said. “Instead of driving the cogitative complexity of a two-year commitment, tell people this is the actual cost of the device.”

In the future, Mr. Bezos said, he is not opposed to offering a lower upfront price with some sort of commitment if customers want it. But he still doesn’t like that approach. “I personally like the cogitative simplicity of saying, ‘Buy the device and use it or don’t use it,’ and have both sides of the business stand alone.

Kindle's wireless downloads are powered by Sprint Nextel, but the wireless costs are built into Kindle's pricing. If Amazon were to make cheaper Kindles, what kind of fee structure would make sense?

Bezos also said Amazon has "strong opinions" about Google's settlement with book publishers allowing the search giant to digitize millions of books, which he said should be "revisited," according to reports. Google's Book Search project and its plans to work with publishers to sell electronic books pose a growing threat to Amazon's e-book strategy.

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