Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Amazon Kindle Tablet









With all the hype surrounding the HP Touchpad fire sale lately (by the way my 3 online orders were all eventually cancelled, so if you find one for $99 get an extra one), there has been some increased attention to tablets in general.  Rumors were that Amazon was going to come out with their own tablet and it was going to be 'hundreds' less than the iPad.  It looks like that is the case based on this recent article.

According to the article, the tablet is supposed to come out at the end of November, will be a 7 inch full color Android based tablet and will sell for $250.  At that size and price range, they're not competing directly against Apple per se, it's more a competitor for the Nook color, which is the same size and price.

One article I read said they were smart to do that, in that over 80% of the tablet market is owned by Apple, with all of the rest of the Android tablets out there competing for the remaining 20%.  If they were to go for that 20% piece of the pie, they wouldn't stand to make as much $.  Another article mentioned that as of Feb of 2011, Barnes and Noble (Nook color) claimed to have 25% of the ebook reader market while Amazon had approx 75%.  So they're trying to expand their big chunk of the pie even more.

Taken from the article referenced above:

"So why will people buy this device instead of a Nook Color? Well, beyond the deep Amazon services integration, there will be two other reasons, I believe. First, Amazon is going to promote the hell out of this thing on Amazon.com. Second, the plan right now is to give buyers a free subscription to Amazon Prime.

The service, which Amazon currently sells for $79 a year, gives users access things like free unlimited two-day shipping, and no minimum purchases for free shipping. More importantly for this product, Prime users get access to Amazon’s Instant Video service. There will be more Kindle-related perks, I imagine."

What I don't like based on what I read is that Amazon customized the Android OS and removed a lot of the standard items like the Android Market in favor I'm sure of the Amazon App store, which is fine, but initially it will probably be very Amazon centric, until some hacker types get their hands on one and make it easier to customize.

Personally, similar to a $500+ tablet, I don't see the need for a $250 ebook reader when I have a 4.3 inch display phone with WiFi and 3G.  However, as the HP Touchpad fire sale has shown, there is definitely a huge market for Tablets as a secondary device, if the price is right.  And right now, that price is $150 or below and on eBay they're still going for around $210 and selling, so if Amazon does come out with their 10 inch tablet in the first quarter of 2012 in a similar price range, they may do very well.

Any interest in a Nook Color, Nook Tablet or Amazon Kindle / Fire?  Right now it seems a bit like device overload, but I'm sure come Christmas time they'll all sell like hot cakes.  



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