How To Kill The Kindle Tablet Dream
Source: Ethan McKinney
We have been huge fans of the idea of a Kindle Android tablet, as we believe that only Amazon has a platform that is powerful enough to challenge Apple’s iPad and iOS ecosystem. But who would have thought that Amazon is brave enough to cripple its tablet?
Amazon's Wi-Fi Kindle
Amazon's Wi-Fi Kindle
There is no tablet market. It is an iPad market. Period. This is how I concluded my article on a potential Amazon Kindle in July, which was based on my conviction that the Kindle tablet is Android’s only chance in the tablet market.
It is rather naïve to think that there can be iPad competition when Android tablet makers are now shifting to a sub-$200 price point in the hope to achieve sales volume of tablets when Apple’s average sales price of an iPad is at $628. It is rather naïve to think that there is suddenly a tablet market when WebOS tablets are selling like hotcakes in a $99 fire sale. There is a very clear difference between the perceived value of a sub-$200 tablet and a $500+ iPad. The iPad owns the mindshare, innovative pace and profits while copycats are picking up breadcrumbs that have been dropped by Apple.
The tablet market is about a platform and an ecosystem that consists foremost of user experience, perceived value, an application environment as well as ecosystem integration that includes other platform devices and services �C such as the iPhone, iPod, iCloud and, in the future, Mac computers and possibly TVs. What we should have learned so far is that the tablet war cannot be won with discount prices and hardware specs when essential lessons are ignored.
Amazon has a unique opportunity to build a successful tablet. It has the Kindle platform, it has experience in designing tablets (if we consider the Kindle eBook reader a tablet), it has cloud services and it has the resources to support such a device against Apple. Yet we are now hearing that Apple may be crippling the platform by modifying pre-Android 2.2 and call the operating system Kindle OS, by cutting access to the Android market, by eliminating a camera from the tablet and using the challenged 7-inch form factor. An Amazon tablet could have fueled interest in tablet apps for the Android market, but it appears that Amazon is favoring the idea that developers should be developing apps that are available through Amazon’s Android Market. Amazon’s tablet is said to sell for $250 and resemble the look of the Blackberry Playbook. A more expensive version may be released in Q1 2012.
Amazon has the capability to successfully sell a tablet in huge numbers through its online channel �C as we know that the Kindle eBook reader has been the only non-iPad tablet that has sold out in pre-orders before. If this is Amazon’s idea how to compete with the iPad, it will kill the dream of a true alternative to the iPad. However, this Amazon Kindle may not be created to become an iPad challenger, but an upgraded Kindle that will compete with the Barnes&Noble Nook Color.
It is alls peculation at this point, but we admit that we are somewhat disappointed by the initial information about a Kindle Android tablet You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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