To say this is to ignore the well-established history of retail upselling.
When someone walks into a Best Buy and tells a salesperson "I want to spend $600 on a TV" the standard practice is to show them what they get for $600 and then you show them what more you get if you spend just a bit extra. People often walk out of these stores spending more than intended.
By linking the Fire with the iPad, Amazon is (IMHO) making the same mistake. A consumer will look at the Fire and if the iPad is then on their mind they'll look at it and see what that extra gets them. Not everyone will buy an iPad but some will when they see it plays games, has a richer app experience, has a larger display and so on.
What Apple has mastered is aspirational purchasing. People want to own Apple products. The last thing you should do is remind your potential customers that your product is an inferior (albeit cheaper) version.
Amazon has done one thing right: they haven't created an iPad clone. Don't then lose that advantage by making comparisons.
See what's going to happen is in 6 months there'll quite likely be 9" and/or 10" Fires. They won't be $300 cheaper than the (then) iPad 3. This is where your earlier comparisons come back to haunt you.
> Not everyone will buy an iPad but some will when they see it plays games, has a richer app experience, has a larger display and so on.
The kindle fire can play games and has a rich app experience thanks to android. The only thing the ipad has going for it is the larger display. Time will tell if people care about that.
"The only thing the ipad has going for it is the larger display."
There are a few other key, and important differences other than screen size.
o IOS 4 (and soon 5) - Lots of pre-existing premium apps.
o 8 Gigabytes Flash vs 16 Gigabytes. (I was surprised to see no SD card capability on the Fire. That sucks. I have a 64 GB iPad, and the extra flash makes a difference on long trips when you are watching videos)
o Video/Camera capability on iPad
o 10 Hours Battery on iPad vs 8 Hours on Fire
For a media consumption device that will be used on airplanes, the 20% less battery life (or 25% more on the iPad), and the limited 8 Gigabytes of memory is unfortunate. It's a nice first attempt, but for anyone with the extra money, I think the iPad still offers the better value play - and clearly is the higher quality offering.
The Kindle stores everything in the cloud for free.
> Video/Camera capability on iPad
> 10 Hours Battery on iPad vs 8 Hours on Fire
I see everyone saying here that people don't care about features, they only care about the content, this is why previous Android tablets failed despite having more features than the iPad. Again, I think only time will tell.
> It's a nice first attempt, but for anyone with the extra money, I think the iPad still offers the better value play
But it's $300 more expensive, that's a huge difference for the regular customer. And as I explained, the difference in features isn't that perceivable for non-techies except for the size.
Kindle Fire is built off the Android 2.1 phone OS and lacks the speed improvements of 2.2 and 2.3, as well as the tablet interface elements added in 3.X. I would hesitate to call the compatible Apps in the Amazon Appstore "premium" for those reasons. Games will work comparably, but for anything else people there is distinct difference.
When someone walks into a Best Buy and tells a salesperson "I want to spend $600 on a TV" the standard practice is to show them what they get for $600 and then you show them what more you get if you spend just a bit extra. People often walk out of these stores spending more than intended.
By linking the Fire with the iPad, Amazon is (IMHO) making the same mistake. A consumer will look at the Fire and if the iPad is then on their mind they'll look at it and see what that extra gets them. Not everyone will buy an iPad but some will when they see it plays games, has a richer app experience, has a larger display and so on.
What Apple has mastered is aspirational purchasing. People want to own Apple products. The last thing you should do is remind your potential customers that your product is an inferior (albeit cheaper) version.
Amazon has done one thing right: they haven't created an iPad clone. Don't then lose that advantage by making comparisons.
See what's going to happen is in 6 months there'll quite likely be 9" and/or 10" Fires. They won't be $300 cheaper than the (then) iPad 3. This is where your earlier comparisons come back to haunt you.