“In its arsenal, Amazon has its own music, movie, books and related content offerings, which makes it very easy for Amazon to integrate everything into its own customized, service offering,” Tim Bajarin writes for PC Magazine.
“It also has its own Android store. And it even has a cloud-based, storage service, which may be similar to what Apple will offer with its cloud offering sometime this year,” Bajarin writes. “Owning these services and tying them to a solid tablet would be a brilliant move by Amazon, and this is why it’s a no brainer for Amazon to add tablet hardware to its already successful Kindle ebook reader line of products. And if my sources are correct, it could price the 7-inch version around $349 and the 10-inch model around $449, which would be one of the more aggressive tablets on the market.”
MacDailyNews Take: Besides books, every one of Amazon’s services pales significantly in comparison to Apple’s offerings. If you’ve ever purchased an album from Amazon’s MP3 store and waited all day for the whole thing to finally download, you know what we mean. Yes, Amazon has a music, but it cannot compare to iTunes Store. Speaking of iTunes – the app, not the store – where’s Amazon’s media jukebox? Yes, Amazon has a cloud music service. With no music label support. It will look cheap and under-featured next to Apple’s iCloud (or whatever they call it). Imagine a game of chess: Amazon has more pieces than most others, but still not all, and they’re made of cheap plastic. Apple’s got all the pieces – or very soon will with their cloud announcement(s) – and they’re all platinum.
“While this would surely be a competitive offering against Apple’s iPad, I believe Amazon’s move would be aimed more at the other Android competitors instead. In fact, I believe Amazon is smart enough to know that trying to go after Apple, with its huge marketing budget and well-run retail stores, would be folly,” Bajarin writes. “Over the next few weeks, there will be a lot of speculation about an Amazon tablet. You may even hear that it will be an iPad killer, but don’t fall for that malarkey,” Bajarin writes. “Yes, it will be competitive with Apple’s iPad, but I believe Amazon’s real target is not Apple, but the other Android vendors who are going after the market with mostly a hardware play and jerry-rigged service offerings.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The more fake iPads that are released, the more confusion in the marketplace, and the faster your average consumer flocks to iPad. Plus, $450 is a lot to blow on a knockoff when the real deal is right there starting at just $50 more. Outside of tech masochists, why would anyone would waste their cash an iPad knockoff?
I’d trust Amazon over anyone but Apple. Excellent customer service, and music downloads have always been as fast as iTunes- however, iTunes is a superior user experience by far. As is the iPad. A Kindle Plus- if it were cheap enough, could do well against Nooks and the iPad wannabes. Let’s be honest- regarding search, Google rules. And Amazon aint no clueless Dell or Microsoft.
I don’t trust Amazon any farther than I could throw them. They summarily banned me from their marketplace seller program, despite a 100% positive rating over dozens of sales and two years, after my wife, on a totally separate account, spaced out and failed to ship one book. We don’t even have the same name— they banned my 100% positive account based simply on having the same address listed as this separate non-performing account. So far, this could be incompetence. BUT— then, they offer absolutely NO consideration of my perfectly valid explanation. Their “appeal process” consists of a boilerplate, robotic “FU” reply to two emails, after which they stop returning emails at all, and they offer NO way to speak to any live person about the situation. I have not purchased from Amazon since, and never will. This is an absolutely EVIL way to treat anyone— if Amazon were a government (and it is bigger and more influential than most!) this would be collective punishment, with utter lack of due process. No, thank you. Amazon sucks balls, they can die and rot in hell if they think that’s how to treat people.
Apple, PayPal, eBay, PGP and more have the same attitude. Apple took a large amount of money from my credit card with absolutely no justification or authority then refuse to reply to even my hard copy letters mailed to them. I’m getting ready to issue court proceedings. And I’m one of their biggest fans. Imagine how many lukewarm people are pissed off with them!
eBay banned me but refuses to say why. PayPal has a universally-bad reputation, see for just one retaliation by the people who should matter most to these companies — their customers.
It’s self-destructive, blind, inexplicable madness and it’s growing. This and what I call “para-sites” (idiotic, unhelpful meta-sites) run the risk of destroying the usefulness of the web altogether. Other things that piss me off include those Captcha devices (moronic over-kill) and HTTP MailTo forms instead of real email addresses. (Loved by lazy or incompetent webmasters, hated by everyone else.) What the hell is the world coming to?
Your wife must give one helluva good bj if you’re willing to publicly blame Amazon for her incompetence.
Only if he’s a Microsoft devotee where sucking, not blowing, would work 100% of the time.
Fragmentation grenade!! All droids duck!
The competition for most of Apple’s products can only compete on price, and even then there’s usually a higher overall cost of ownership, crummier experience, and much cheaper materials. With the iPad, the others can’t manage a worthwhile price advantage, even with cheaper materials and a crummier experience.
In fact, I believe Amazon is smart enough to know that trying to go after Apple, with its huge marketing budget and well-run retail stores, would be folly,” Bajarin writes.
Not to mention Apple’s superior products.
I sure hope Amazon isn’t stupid enough to go this route. What would be the point? How can it be unique if it’s a generic Android tablet like any other? If Amazon wants to do a color Kindle, that’s fine, but Amazon needs to use their own OS so they have control. Using Android is suicide. The device will just be rooted and abused, like BN’s Nook (rooting by-passes all of BN’s controls). Besides, I purposes bought a Kindle because all it does is read books. I don’t want it to do anything else! (I’ve got my iPad and iPhone for that!)
If Amazon does this, it will make me think twice about purchasing Kindle books. I have a Kindle (and an iPad) and I love Kindle books (150+ so far). But going with Android makes me wonder about Amazon’s commit to platform neutrality. Who isn’t to say that a few years down the road that their own tablet would take precedence with features over iOS? I can imagine them doing Android first, or having unique new features exclusive to that platform. iBookstore and other book companies are starting to look better to me.
Not to denigrate Amazon but just as a personal preference, iBooks has a nicer layout than the Kindle app. I don’t actually have a Kindle, just the app so I’m comparing it on the iPhone/iPad.
Transferring your reading to iBooks would not result in too much of a loss in terms of a library as Apple has expanded the list of titles available on the iBookstore tremendously.
I think Amazon would be out of its league even against other Android offerings.
if amazon creates an inferior consumer touchpoint that competes directly with the apple iPad, Amazon opens a comparison that hurts its entire product line.
Great, so Amazon is going to further dilute the already tiny market for Android tablets. It’s like watching rats fight over a crumb of bread. Pathetic.