New Amazon Kindle Fire tablet and new Kindles

[MikeTheHockeyFan]

The Fire is NOT an iPad rival whatsoever. It is completely designed to make it as easy and as seamless as possible to purchase and watch/listen/read their video, music, and audio content. Amazon is selling them at a great price point and is losing money on each sale because they know if they can deliver their book and media content quickly from the cloud to a great interface, they will make a lot of revenue off of consumers.

Amazon is ahead of Apple as far as providing content from the cloud, that's certain.

Whether the Fire can cannibalize iPad sales depends solely on whether developers flock to it and make tons, tons of great apps. We have seen up to this point that the iTunes App Store as a juggernaut, despite the restrictive rules and lengthy and over-complicated app approval process. Despite all these hindrances, developers continue to release great, high-quality content for iOS devices.

I think the Kindle Fire wont be a full on iPad alternative, but it should be a great competitor to the similarly priced tablets. Most likely it'll beat out the lower spec ones. But given its size, and storage capacity. I don't see it as a direct competitor. More as a "Hey look at what I can do, I'm kinda like an iPad".

This is exactly my opinion and that of quite a few tech analysts I read regularly. The Fire is going to destroy the non-iPad segment of the tablet market. At the moment, that segment is very small.

We'll see what happens.

 

[Casio]

The Fire is NOT an iPad rival whatsoever. It is completely designed to make it as easy and as seamless as possible to purchase and watch/listen/read their video, music, and audio content. Amazon is selling them at a great price point and is losing money on each sale because they know if they can deliver their book and media content quickly from the cloud to a great interface, they will make a lot of revenue off of consumers.

I respectfully disagree. I think you have to ask, how do most people use their iPad? Do they consume content? Or do they produce it?

Compared to the Fire, the iPad is a much better device at producing content, it has larger screen, it has a universal dock connector, people have already created applications for people to create content on. Apple does not have to worry about Amazon competing in this area in the short term.

In my experience, the vast majority of iPad users primarially use the device for consuming content. Watching Videos, using Twitter and Facebook, browsing the web, using skype, listening to Music, reading eBooks, checking Emails etc. This is an area that the Kindle directly completes with the iPad in, for a much lower price point.

Personally speaking. I like the idea of having a portable device that I can consume content on, but to me (someone not already in the Apple ecosystem), spending $500+ on an iPad or other Android tablet is too much when I could get a relatively decent (and more functional for my needs) laptop for the same price. However, at $199 this is a completely different scenario, and I will be lapping one of these up. I suspect a lot of people will be doing that same.

If it takes sales which would otherwise go to the iPad, it is competing with the iPad. If people are comparing the two when deciding on which device to get, it is competing with the iPad.

 

[Robin]

As Casio has said, you're basically wrong about this. So, I think you can stop arguing it now.

Another limitation may be apps. The Kindle Fire uses a variation of Android 2.3, with its own mostly unique interface; I say "mostly" because every so often, in the Web browser or in messages that popped up, I saw hints of the Kindle Fire's Android roots. Apps for the device will come from the Amazon Appstore, but Amazon stocks a fraction of the total number of Android apps available now--just 10,000 of the 200,000 in the Android Market.

Still another issue beyond the comparatively limited app selection: Amazon again gave mixed answers regarding compatibility between the Kindle Fire and the greater universe of Android apps. One spokesperson said that apps that called for features that aren't on the tablet (such as a camera) wouldn't work; another said outright that the company would be curating apps; and still another, when asked about app compatibility, mentioned that apps would have to be qualified to work, and that some might not work with the Kindle Fire. Furthermore, when asked about the coming Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and how apps designed for it or Honeycomb will work on the Kindle Fire, the Amazon rep couldn't field an answer beyond noting that if Ice Cream Sandwich requires Amazon to do something to maintain compatibility, “we'll do our best” to do so.

So its not as clear cut as sticking your Andriod apps on it out of the box, I'm not wrong. Read hundreds of other articles and they say basically the same thing... no guaranteed Andriod app compatibility.

 

[bergauk]

The App Store nonsense really needs to stop. How many of those 200,000 apps on the Android Market do you think are actually used? Can you even begin to name 20 Apps that you'd absolutely want on a tablet?

The fact that it uses Android 2.3 is by no means a limiting factor to it. Nor is the "lack" of apps.

 

[Casio]

So its not as clear cut as sticking your Andriod apps on it out of the box, I'm not wrong. Read hundreds of other articles and they say basically the same thing... no guaranteed Andriod app compatibility.

Ok, I'll do this line by line

One spokesperson said that apps that called for features that aren't on the tablet (such as a camera) wouldn't work;

Obvious.

another said outright that the company would be curating apps; and still another, when asked about app compatibility, mentioned that apps would have to be qualified to work, and that some might not work with the Kindle Fire.

So Amazon will be doing a selection process for the AppStore like Apple. It's not a question of the app not working, it's a question of the app not being approved for the store. The apps that won't work are the apps that require a feature set that isn't available on the Fire. But again, that's obvious, a camera app isn't going to work on a device without a camera.

Furthermore, when asked about the coming Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, and how apps designed for it or Honeycomb will work on the Kindle Fire, the Amazon rep couldn't field an answer beyond noting that if Ice Cream Sandwich requires Amazon to do something to maintain compatibility, “we'll do our best” to do so.

This is the case with every version of Android. When a new version of Android comes out, it may include feature that developers want to use in their apps, which won't work in the previous version of Android. It's not specific to the Kindle Fire. There are apps in the Marketplace right now which require a Tegra device, Or require a notification light. Apps in the Marketplace do no have to work across all devices.

 

[Robin]

My point is you can't just stick Android apps on the Fire without them going through an Amazon approval process to make sure they work with the device which is what you just confirmed. That's and extra step which needs to be carried out and how fast that process is handled will be one of the key factors in its success, the point which I have been making all along.

If a specific Android app doesn't work on the Kindle and needs to go through some jigging by Amazon it might as well be made for an entirely different OS because something however insignificant still needs to be done to make it compatible. Amazon even said its not to be considered an Android device, its likely to not even carry the Android logo anywhere on the box or the device.