September 28th, 2011
Just so no one gets the wrong idea about where the Kindle Fire is pointed, Jeff Bezos includes this bit of oratory on the front page of Amazon.com:
There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp. . . .
We are building premium products and offering them at non-premium prices.
It’s like he’s trying to put Steve Jobs in the ground all by himself. And unless I’m missing something, Amazon also disappeared the iPad from its site today. You can still buy an iPad from Amazon, but they don’t seem to be fulfilled by Amazon itself which, unless I’m mistaken, they were yesterday. Also, when you go to the “Laptops, Tablets & Notebooks” page there’s a list of tablets by brand. Apple does not make the list. Below that is a window of “Best-Selling Tablets”: Amazon lists the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, the Motorola XOOM, and the Samsung Galaxy. No iPad.
Finally, Amazon was able to do with today’s launch what Apple hasn’t done in a long time: Take everybody by almost total surprise (the leaks about the Kindle Fire didn’t appear until the last couple days) and then radically over-deliver (not just the Fire but the totally new Kindle line-up with much lower-than-anticipated price points).
I suspect that the Fire is going to cut the legs out from underneath the iPad.
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Maybe they’ll snag The Daily, too, so we can get a Fire instead of an iPad? : )
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As a long time user of Apple products (and being honest- I’ve swigged the Apple kool-aid from the beginning) and owner of an iPad 2 I was impressed by the rollout marketing for the Fire. But I can’t help flashing back over the last 20 years… How many Apple killing products have been introduced? 30? 40? 50? That being said… Some day SOMEONE will hit that sweet spot and offer a product clearly superior. Is it the Fire? Maybe… but I’d wait to see the actual product before I got too excited, though.
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I could be wrong but I don’t think the iPad has ever been for sale on Amazon – just various accessories. I know I’ve looked for it before and been unable to find it.
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It’s a wee bit too early to say regarding murdering the iPad. The patent infringement lawsuits haven’t even been filed yet.
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Seems to me the Fire will push millions of people who don’t yet have a Kindle or an iPad. These millions are those who have long wanted to break into e-reading above all. In 2010, just when the Kindle had reached critical mass–and a mass-market price point–and they were ready to take the plunge, the iPad blew these people out of the market with its incredible functionality (and prohibitively high price). They put off their buying until the market found some clarity. Now there’s clarity. Now they’ll be able to justify a couple of hundred bucks for an e-reader that has a color screen and a load of functionality, so they don’t feel like Luddite dweebs. This is good for the rest of us. Now Apple will have to release an iPad mini at $299, the 8gb Touch’s original price. Too bad we can’t get the same competition going in healthcare across state lines.
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The Kindle Fire isn’t meant to replace the Kindle ereader, that’s why a whole line of new ereaders was also introduced.
The Kindle Fire is for media content, specifically music, movies, TV, and magazines. You can read ebooks too, just like any other Kindle app, but it’s not the focus.
Because the price is so low for a tablet, a lot of people are getting both the Fire and one of the ereaders.
I’ve never much seen the point of a tablet, since I don’t watch TV or many movies, but I can see the appeal for others.
The Fire was actually meant to compete with B&N’s Nook Color and to also get the people for whom the iPad is just too expensive.
The real iPad competitor will be the 10 inch full-featured tablet that Amazon is rumored to being coming out with first quarter next year.
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> I suspect that the Fire is going to cut the legs out from underneath the iPad.
That’s like saying Honda will cut the legs out from underneath Mercedes-Benz. There is plenty of room for both the iPad and the Fire in the multibillion-dollar tablet market.
SB September 28, 2011 at 7:51 pm
So, the thing I like about the Kindle is the e-ink: I’ve been shocked at how great it is. My understanding, however, is that the Fire is an LCD screen like an iPad and the others, right? So, if I were to get the Fire, I couldn’t really use it to replace my Kindle — too much eyestrain.
The value of, say, the iPhone is that I could use it to condense my iPod, BlackBerry, cell phone, and watch into one little device. The Fire, however…if it’s not really replacing the Kindle, I’m not getting as much out of it. Or am I missing something?
(Perhaps I’m over-thinking this. I’m not planning on getting a tablet at the moment, and probably won’t until my laptop gives up the ghost. I imagine if I was actively looking for a tablet, this would be relatively enticing, though I question the utility of the cloud media storage model.)