Lighting the Kindling on Fire
First... read this on what I think the Kindle Fire will mean for the industry
But second - here are my thoughts on the device itself rather than the overall industry implications. Amazon got it right: tablets don't sell on specs. Hardware only sells on specs when all else remains equal: the heyday of this was windows 98 beige and then black boxes which were indistinguishable other than ever improving hardware. In tablets, all else is not equal. There is a big difference between different mobile OS's, and only one of them which is really, fully, properly optimized for tablets (and sadly, that one is not webOS on a TouchPad... or even XDA flavored green robots... damn you Apple)...
And Kindle OS might be the second. Ok ok, Kindle is not an OS per se - it is built on Android. But that is like saying the Karmann Ghia is a VW Beetle underneath - which it is, but it is oh so much more sexy.
No one will really know or care that it is running android underneath, other than the fact that it is simple to use, reminds them of their phones, and they can run most of the same apps.
But the big difference is the Amazon browser - which uses Amazon's army of servers and advanced tech in the underpinnings of the web to -- according to them - no one has really tested it yet -- deliver a much faster and better web. I believe them. One of the issues is that flash on webKit browsers... well... sucks. The Pre was the first phone in the world to get it. Then android got it, and everyone said it would be an iPhone killer and really... no one ended up caring, because it is sort of useless. I think this browser, Silk, will really change the way that tablets use the web, and for the better.
Finally, I just want to say its kind of interesting that the hardware (made by Quantas, a huge OEM) is basically identical to the BlackBerry Playbook... and Amazon is selling it for only $199, when the playbook came out at twice that.
Is Amazon going to loose money on every Fire sold? Probably, to start off with. But for all the reasons I gave here, they can afford to do so.
But second - here are my thoughts on the device itself rather than the overall industry implications. Amazon got it right: tablets don't sell on specs. Hardware only sells on specs when all else remains equal: the heyday of this was windows 98 beige and then black boxes which were indistinguishable other than ever improving hardware. In tablets, all else is not equal. There is a big difference between different mobile OS's, and only one of them which is really, fully, properly optimized for tablets (and sadly, that one is not webOS on a TouchPad... or even XDA flavored green robots... damn you Apple)...
And Kindle OS might be the second. Ok ok, Kindle is not an OS per se - it is built on Android. But that is like saying the Karmann Ghia is a VW Beetle underneath - which it is, but it is oh so much more sexy.
No one will really know or care that it is running android underneath, other than the fact that it is simple to use, reminds them of their phones, and they can run most of the same apps.
But the big difference is the Amazon browser - which uses Amazon's army of servers and advanced tech in the underpinnings of the web to -- according to them - no one has really tested it yet -- deliver a much faster and better web. I believe them. One of the issues is that flash on webKit browsers... well... sucks. The Pre was the first phone in the world to get it. Then android got it, and everyone said it would be an iPhone killer and really... no one ended up caring, because it is sort of useless. I think this browser, Silk, will really change the way that tablets use the web, and for the better.
Finally, I just want to say its kind of interesting that the hardware (made by Quantas, a huge OEM) is basically identical to the BlackBerry Playbook... and Amazon is selling it for only $199, when the playbook came out at twice that.
Is Amazon going to loose money on every Fire sold? Probably, to start off with. But for all the reasons I gave here, they can afford to do so.
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