

Speculation on an Amazon iPad Competitor - uptown
http://www.marco.org/2011/04/15/kindle-tablet-speculation

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jfb
When I was at the iTMS, the only competitor that anybody was afraid of was
Amazon. I'm certain that that awareness hasn't changed in the last few years.

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aaronblohowiak
The Amazon MP3 album downloader thing is SO kludgy =( I think AMZN gets the
broad strokes right but their details are just not top-shelf.

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AJ007
If you think that is bad, did you every try the Amazon Unbox video downloader?
Horrendous performance to this day.

As for the Kindle app for the PC, Mac, and iOS, love it.

Amazon is capable of producing high quality products, but they really need to
be careful about letting crap be released. It can do irreversible damage to
your brand.

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reeses
I don't think this is true. Auctions definitely didn't put any nails in
Amazon's coffin.

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ctdonath
Amazon's core is the book model. People forget the two parts of even a paper
book: content and delivery ("reader"). The reader part is so cheap people
never think about it ... hence Amazon's focus on building an e-reader so cheap
that customers won't think about it.

So while everyone else is making expensive tablets which customers must choose
between, Amazon is making a tablet so cheap it will be ubiquitous. Sure,
they'll improve it and add other media capabilities etc but the focus is on
CHEAP.

When you buy a paper book, you get a reader without thinking about it. That's
where Amazon is going for ebooks.

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ludwigvan
> Amazon's core is the book model.

Is it? It used to be, but I don't think their core is still concentrated on
books. Go to Amazon, look at the left menu, where is Books? It isn't at the
top.

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kenjackson
Could Amazon fork Android? They're big enough and have enough engineering
horsepower to do it. It feels like this is what they'd need to do to be
confident that Android is feasible in the long run, since I think their cloud
services/advertising and Google's eventually go head-on.

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kmfrk
With the Amazon Appstore (one word, remember), I thought Android would become
a lot more interesting, if Amazon made a phone for themselves that leverages
the store, so it isn't as fragmented and unintelligible as "Android phones in
general".

I'm sure Google wouldn't mind supporting their efforts.

As for a tablet, I don't really get where they're going with this; if I were
them, I'd at least wait and let the other manufacturers test the waters first.

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tomkarlo
I don't think folks are talking about a phone - they're expecting a tablet.
Amazon is already essentially the #2 player in the tablet market but they have
no footprint in the phone market. I suspect they'd be perfectly happy leaving
the phone market to other Android vendors and simply providing a Kindle reader
app.

It doesn't seem like the other vendors are doing a very good job of "testing
the waters". By the time they're done messing around, it might be too late.
Seems like this is the year to either do it or not.

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kmfrk
Eh, I think it's relevant to delineate e-readers like Kindle from app-centric
tablets, "tAPPlets", like, say, the iPad.

E-ink readers are great on their own for obvious reasons and don't have to
compete directly with the iPad. I don't know how well an app-centric Amazon
tablet would do against Apple.

Amazon probably has the money to dip their feet and fail, but how well are any
of the competitors doing by comparison?

They also obviously have an absurd customer base to tap, and they already have
Kindle, on-demand video and rentals, but I don't know if that is going to cut
it. If they focus on being cheaper, maybe, but good luck with that. It would
be interesting if they partnered with Readability, at least just as a cute
"fuck you" to Apple.

They'll have to focus a little differently or frame their device in an
interesting way. Time will tell.

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AJ007
The fact that everyone else is doing a horrific job at making a tablet is a
bigger sign, to me, that Amazon has a shot at pulling it off.

One thing that stuck out to me recently is that on Amazon's left sidebar
digital content is now on the top. If Amazon loses their battle over state
sales tax then they need something that puts them on a level playing field and
that is going to be digital content.

In my opinion the difference between e-readers and tablets will very soon be
non-existent.

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s3b
I'd say apple should just pull the kindle app right now and force the users to
migrate to iBooks rather than do it later when Amazon provides an alternative.
When(if) Amazon comes out with theirs they'll start making more demands to
force apple to boot them out, at which point they'll get a bunch of kindle
addicted ipad users migrating to their tablet for free.

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megablast
Why would they keep this as a threat? Why not release it when it was ready?
They have little to lose? And can anyone secretly bring out a tablet anymore?
Not even apple can.

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Groxx
Yeah, but how long will it be before we get an SDK for it?

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davidw
Could it be that they are stalling on the Kindle SDK because "Android is the
future" or something like that?

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Groxx
I _hope_ it's something that simple and good for developers. I have no real
trust that it will happen.

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Jayasimhan
May be the Honeycomb team thinks this too..

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Josephat
Mirasol. It is the answer to everything. Alas, I have it on good authority
that it is not happening his year.

So move along, nothing to see here.

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ugh
It’s nice technology but not really the answer to anything. For one, great
tablets are already possible without that technology, it would merely be an
incremental improvement. You don’t need a Mirasol display in the living room
or the kitchen (except insofar as power savings are concerned). And: one
technology doesn’t make the product. Especially tablets can only be great if
the right technologies are combined in the right way. There are no miracle
cures.

