I’m just loving the end of summer technology announcements. Here comes Amazon with its brand new Android tablet, the Kindle Fire.
“The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch display and sell for $199, compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad, Amazon executives said in interviews with Bloomberg Businessweek. The device, a souped-up version of the Kindle electronic-book reader, will run on Google Inc.’s Android software, the Seattle- based company said. Amazon also introduced a touch-screen version of its e-reader, to be called Kindle Touch.”
I think for $200, its a definite must have gadget. If not for anything, I will buy it so my kids can play their nik jr and PBS games that they cannot on IPAD cause of no flash support.
I personally dont like Honeycomb/gingerbread type of classifications. I know that they probably picked it up from Linux distribution developers who were coming up with names like Red Hat and Ubuntu .. but names like that cant tell a user like me which version is what?
another day another tablet… however Amazon has the ecosystem to support its offering and the price is right. Books, Music, Apps… you got it all. Additionally, Amazon has the direct channel to its customers and doesn’t have to depend on the retail channel as other competitors.
I agree with experts who’re predicting around a 15% market share for Amazon in the tablet market, and that most of it will come from displacing other Android tablets and the iPad market will hardly be impacted.
Amazon’s purpose of coming out with Fire is not to take anything away from anyone. Its out there (a loss leader) to be a purchasing portal for all the content and products that Amazon is selling. With their ever-growing collection of multi-media, ebooks and now the Android Marketplace and cloud services.
Apple sells the iPad as a product, that’s what makes them profits. Amazon doesn’t care if you buy the Fire or not as long as you use their service they win. I’m actually seriously considering getting their Prime service for the steaming movie service (not even counting 2 day deliveries of all products they sell) and getting rid of the 12 year old Netflix subscription. Maybe next month!
So we received our Fire two days ago but wife did not open it as I was not there (she knew that I wanted to unwrap it). I reached home last night, and looking forward to open the box tonight and take it for a spin. Will post my feedback in a day or so.
