

7-inch Amazon Tablet launches in October, 10-inch Version in Q1 2012 - luigionline
http://www.i4u.com/47619/7-inch-amazon-tablet-launches-october-10-inch-amazon-tablet-q1-2012

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iaskwhy
"I just hope Amazon is able to give their Android tablet a clean and modern
design. I still think that the Amazon Kindle is one of the most ugly gadgets
on the market, despite its mega success."

First the Windows Explorer and now this. Design is not minimalism. For
something that is not touch-based, the Kindle is actually a very clean and
modern device appearance-wise. And it also has great design. A good design is
one that is easy to use for a given context, something the Kindle gets right
most of the time. If Windows Explorer can get my mother to stop asking how to
copy mp3 files from one folder to another than their redesign is a good one as
well.

Looking good is only a small part of designing something actually.

~~~
woodpanel
Thank you. This is the exact same sentence that was bothering me. The kindle
would be nerve-wrecking if i had to slide for every new page view. I hope that
they don't strip the new kindle of its physical keys.

People don't get usability but they get how to impress others. That's why
people think it's an improvement if typing on a phones takes thrice the time.
It looks cooler. That's why people like driving those new mini coopers, that
look cool from the outside but are just a mess in usability.

~~~
leviathant
Re: usability -- Getting OT, but my wife and I are aiming to get a used Mini
not because they look cool, but because they're small and fuel efficient.
We've driven the Smart car, it's transmission is borderline scary. I would
never pay the price a new one costs, but used prices are very reasonable. We
have a Dodge Magnum, which is extremely usable, but not so duel efficient, and
the size makes it harder to find parking for. Sometimes we need to get
somewhere in the city where public transit and taxis don't really make sense.
A Mini proves extremely usable in that case.

(Okay, so there is also something kind of humorous about having one car named
Magnum and another named Mini)

~~~
cpeterso
My Mini is surprisingly fuel efficient (40+ MPG on the highway), small on the
outside, big on the inside, and fun to drive. But as woodpanel said, the Mini
is indeed a usability mess inside. Pretty much every switch, button, and knob
is a WTF. For a good example, be sure to ask the salesman for a demo of the
Mini's satellite radio.

------
ansy
Amazon's 7-inch will be its answer to the Nook Color, and will probably hit
the same price point. It should be no more expensive than $250 and maybe as
low as $199. Amazon might even use ads to reach the low point. It will be
slightly faster and a more fully fledged Android device. Amazon is probably
betting this is the device that will sell through the roof.

Amazon's 10-inch will be more like the Kindle DX than an iPad killer. It will
just be available for users with very specific use cases and sales
expectations will be low. It should be priced between $400 and $500, double
whatever the 7-inch costs. Amazon can't have high hopes going up against the
iPad after seeing the bloodbath of 2011, but there's not a lot it can do about
it either. At the very least it will make the smaller tablet look like a
better bargain by putting it next to a much higher priced alternative, which I
suspect is the role the Kindle DX plays more than anything else.

~~~
achompas
This is not a bad position to be in. Another HN comment said it best: Amazon
is the one company who can afford to sell products at a loss, since they can
potentially recuperate on content sales.

I'll also agree with the Amazon "Kindle Color DX" theory you put forward here.
They'll cross-subsidize entry tablet costs with a higher-end model.

Aside: does Apple do the same with the iPad? I imagine they don't make a lot
on 16GB models; instead, I assume they make lots of money by up-selling $4-8
in flash memory for $100 per module.

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thadeus_venture
Everyone keeps framing this as a competitor to the iPad, but it's going after
a market that is not currently buying tablets at all. People who can't afford
an iPad or don't want one at the current price:features ratio. If this means
anything for the iPad, it's that it may expand the android tablet market
enough to attract app developers, making it more sensible to produce an
android tablet with high quality expensive hardware in the future, when the
app eco system is more mature.

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ck2
From the same article - this is all nonsense.

    
    
      The details about the Amazon Tablet(s) are still very vague. 
      Amazon is doing a great job so far to keep everything secret. 
      It is assumed that Amazon will use Android, but not even that is sure. 
      Rumored screen sizes range from 7 over 9 to 10.1-inches.
    
    

And the real article the nonsense is based on

<http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110831PD211.html>

------
ulf
"We have seen reports that one of the major weapons Amazon wants to use
against the iPad is price."

Finally someone gets that this might be a good idea.

~~~
thematt
Except it's not a good idea. It's never been about price. Otherwise Apple
would've never succeeded with the iPhone. There are tons of cheaper smartphone
options out there yet people are still flocking to the iPhone. Consumers today
are trending towards quality and usability, even if it costs them slightly
more.

~~~
jsnell
Nonsense. Of course it's partly about price. If it weren't about price then
why doesn't Apple just raise their prices by a factor of 10 and really make a
killing? Why did the Touchpad that had just totally flopped become a hot item
when sold at a 80% discount?

Really price is just one way to differentiate a product from others in the
same niche. Features, specs, manufacturing quality, app ecosystem, design,
brand, usability, etc. are others. Those tons of low-end cheap smartphones are
at least as critical to Android becoming the most popular smartphone platform
as the ones that instead compete with the iPhone by better specs.

Right now Honeycomb tablets aren't all that good at positively differentiating
themselves from the iPad in any useful way. Maybe some people desperately need
some particular Android feature that can't be added to iOS in any way, or
really dislike Apple. Not really a solid foundation... The closest exception
is probably the Eee Transformer.

The real question is whether some other manufacturer really _can_ lower the
price enough to really make it a differentiating factor.

~~~
wisty
There's no margin in touchpads if you want to undercut Apple, but I bet Amazon
doesn't care. They want eyeballs. Amazon is really good at datamining, and
they already have your credit card details. If you interact with any channel
they control, they _will_ find a way to shake you down.

HP and the rest don't have that advantage - they need to make money off the
touchpads, and Apple can undercut them by controlling the App store and
locking down supplies.

~~~
georgemcbay
"There's no margin in touchpads if you want to undercut Apple, but I bet
Amazon doesn't care. They want eyeballs."

The same goes for Google-rola. Should be an interesting next couple of years
for the tablet business in terms of seeing how low these non-Apple players are
willing to go on hardware price in an attempt to prop up their real
moneymakers (content, ads).

------
hopeless
I have 30-40 eBooks (mostly PDF) which aren't very suitable for a Kindle
because they're mostly photographic books and/or programming with nicely
highlighted text. I'm hoping Amazon have realised that eBooks are not
restricted to B&W text and are producing a device to serve that market.

~~~
mdaniel
I am so scared that this mythical new tablet will use a glossy screen, just
like almost every other color tablet out there.

I say soft prayers at night that Amazon will build on the readability of the
Kindle's screen and make their new device have that same soft matte finish.

------
noonespecial
Let's hope they're right on the much lower price. There's a lot of places I'd
like a little web tablet that I just can't risk my $500 iPad.

It sure would be a disappointment if it's just another tablet that costs the
same as an ipad but that's not nearly as good.

~~~
hullo
I'm not sure why so many of these speculation articles don't mention the NOOK
Color, which is a 7" Android-based tablet primarily concerned with reading
with a secondary focus on media, that has a specialized Android app market.
Price: $250. There's your target. The story with a 10" will be different, but
it sounds like that's a question for next year.

~~~
SwellJoe
Agreed. I played with a Nook Color a couple weeks ago and was impressed. If I
could figure out a reason to add yet another piece of portable electronic junk
to my collection (alongside a Nexus One, a Dell netbook dualbooting Linux or
Mac OS X, a laptop, a Kindle, a DS, and probably other crud I can't remember
now), it's what I'd buy. It's cheap enough to nearly be an impulse purchase,
it seemed fast enough and powerful enough for what I'd want to use it for
(though the netbook with a keyboard works better, since writing is mostly what
I imagine I'd want to use it for), and it was cute and fun to play with.

So, yeah, there's already a low price point competitor to the iPad, though
it's not being marketed as such. B&N may be making a mistake in not pushing it
harder as a full-featured tablet...but maybe they know its limitations better
than I do. At that price point, it almost certainly is similarly specced to a
very low end Android phone, so probably can't actually run a lot of bigger
apps effectively.

~~~
joezydeco
B&N isn't making a mistake in not pushing it as a tablet...because it's not a
tablet. It's an e-reader that just happens to have a little web browser and
app store mechanism in it. B&N is selling these at a loss (or at least
breakeven) hoping for the makeup in book sales. They can't be running around
telling everyone that it's great as a web tablet and ignore the book thing.

------
nvictor
> Can a 7-inch tablet mess with the iPad?

annnd, this is what is wrong with blogs, media, news sources today.

leave the damn makers alone. if every tablet has to be compared to iPad all
the time, where is the place for innovation or simply "being different"?. why
can't they come with something on their own?

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rkda
I do hope they'll still continue their Kindle line though.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Presumably this is going to be called the "Kindle Tab" or something like that,
they've built up great brand loyalty to Kindle. I don't think they're going to
discontinue a product that sells as well as the Kindle and nails a specific
use-case the way it does.

------
nnutter
Source: <http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110831PD211.html>

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efsavage
I'd love a 7-10" tablet that had an e-ink screen on one side and an lcd on the
other.

