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Amazon To Launch Kindle Tablet?
Rumors abound that Amazon wants a taste of the tablet market and will unveil a Kindle Tablet later this week. The prevailing thought is Amazon will offer a device that will cost under $300 and will tether closely to its music, movie and digital book content. From the article: "Amazon has brand recognition, a bevy of existing loyal Kindle e-reader owners, and a Web-based e-commerce platform that includes one-click access to buying e-books, movies, digital music downloads, its own Android app store, and streaming media catalog. That adds up to Amazon being uniquely suited to go head-to-head with Apple in the tablet market and become a formidable competitor across the industry."
However, I'm guessing it's probably going to be locked down and running Android in it's barest form. Sort of like a locked down Grid10 tablet.
If Amazon sees this as a way to sell digital media, then I think they're looking at a hard sell. Apple's digital media offerings seem to try to buttress their digital media devices, not the other way around.
I wish amazon the best in this though.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I hope this whole tablet business will not delay what I really expect from Amazon - a hi-res color e-ink Kindle. Same format but a larger display. And please no touch screen, thank you, I don't want my greasy fingers on the display I read.
Tablets have a long way to go to replace dedicated e-book readers. Until they are easily readable in broad daylight and can last at least couple weeks, there will be a market for Kindle.
Someone will release a root kit for it and an appropriate Android install will be available shortly. This is pretty cool I think. I purchased a Nook to read with because I wanted an Android device. I'll buy an inexpensive tablet as well if the feature/value ratio is right for me. I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to offer.
Prediction: In 2 years they'll give you a tablet when you subscribe to Amazon Prime.
Matt Wood
Melbourne, FL
$300 is too much for an e-reader.
Special-purpose e-readers have to be a lot cheaper than comparable phones and tablets, or they're not going to sell.
Ultimately, the phone/tablet market will probably eat the e-reader market. Look what happened to standalone PDAs.
will tether closely to its music, movie and digital book content
Before purchase, I thought I'd use my ipad for that, because that's what marketing said; After purchase, I never do. Its an absolutely killer email reader, a fantastic web browser, great pdf reader (manuals, etc). I play games on it occasionally. Avadon etc. My coworkers have about the same story... repeating the marketers mantra before purchase of consume consume consume media, yet after purchase it's entirely different, electronic paper plus some video games.
There is quite a separation between what the marketing people demand I purchase it for, and what I've seen people actually use it for after purchase. I have a good feeling about it because the actual use turns out to be more valuable than I was expecting.
Amazon might want to watch out; if competitors start marketing toward what tablets are actually used for, they might get left in the dust. Someday I'll want to buy a replacement for my ipad, at that time I'm going to jump at advertisements for "instant on" and "great email reader" and "really awesome webbrowser" and "smooth pdf rendering". I'm going to avoid advertisements about how this is the 50th media format I should buy a full collection of Beetles music on, or how I should re-purchase my complete DVD collection (again) for their new gadget, because that simply didn't work out as an interest for me on my current tablet.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I don't care about another iPad clone. Any rumours on the next e-ink device? E-ink are doing some moderately interesting things with a colour filter in front of the display, so I guess it's possible they'll adopt that. But no-one's talking about it.
Like everyone says: There is no *tablet* market, there's an *iPad* market ....
I'm not so sure. There's an "iPad market" because Apple has done a fantastic job of marketing it. The long line of failed android tablets you refer to are still out there being sold, though.
All it'll take is a big enough company to put some serious marketing (and aggressive pricing) into their android tablet. Then you'll start to see more than just iPads in Starbucks. As it stands now, android is capable of doing everything iOS does on the same or lower hardware.\
If there's a company that could do it, it would probably be Amazon. They're big enough, and they have a large catalog of all sorts of media to back up whatever they come up with.
"is capable of doing everything iOS does on the same or lower hardware"
Sadly not true since most applications aren't native, and JIT optimization or not, aren't quite as fast, let alone faster. iOS is very quick, Apple dislike aside.
That will create the ultimate anti-Apple. Amazon's store is the only one right now that can compete with Apple's App store and if that becomes the de facto Google Android store, that will mean the first real competitor to the iDevice/App Store ecosystem. And Google's cloud + Amazon's cloud will be mother of all clouds too.
My wife loves her Kindle. She uses it a whole lot, and the battery life is incredible and nearly what is advertised (30 days!). I would like one too, but I want color E-ink. I know, it only matters with maybe one of 10 documents I read. (especially considering that I reference out-of-print scans from Google books rather frequently)
Failing color E-ink, I probably will not get a Kindle.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
Amazon is in the position of being able to loss-lead their tablet. As the HP tablet experience shows, price it low enough and even a bricklet will sell.
Why would your eyes hurt after an hour?
I couldn't say why some peoples eyes hurt since that is not my area of expertise but I can tell you that my eyes hurt after reading on my nook color after a couple of hours. I also have a first gen kindle and do not have the same problem with it. I am a software developer and am in front of computer screens all day reading text of monitors without issue.
Maybe its a quality of light issue or refresh rates or something but it happens at least in my experience.
In the end I would put money on tablets winning the battle over e-ink over time unless e-ink vendors can put out some quality color screens that update quickly fairly soon just because they are more versatile at the moment.
With Android Marketplaces there is a fee, terms and conditions. If they want to offer it on those terms they have to roll their own app store, and Google is not likely to build their apps for it. There doesn't have to be any dark motive to playing by the rules.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Dont hold your breath. I doubt we will see one here in the USA until 2013. That said, I'm also hoping for one, but i wont delude my self thinking it will happen soon.
Oh, and i prefer the touch screen since i rarely have to 'type' ( its a reader, not a data entry system ), so the extra real estate sucked up by the keypad is annoying. Its one of the reasons why i eventually 'traded' my kindle Gen1 to a Nook Touch instead of a gen 3 kindle ( that and the nook was rootable )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just hope this does not spell the end of e-ink in favor of LCD. Each has their use, and i refer reading on e-ink any day. ( tho i want color... ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
My guess is that this will be US only, so it'll be useless outside the US even if you can have someone in the US buy it for you and ship it to you.
My email addy? should be easy enough.
What users expect from a device that looks and smells like a tablet is touch-screeny, with animations, with kewl effects, where you can rotate and the screen elegantly redraws itself. And, I'm sorry, you just will not see a fast e-ink screen. It's just a very different thing, with a very different purpose.
Nook Color Android-based tablet/eReader from Barnes & Noble has been on the market for over a year and sold millions of units at $250. Gives Flash, apps, videos, color magazines and ebooks with video inserts, and the best anti-glare coated screen on the market. Technology "leader" Amazon is finally catching up with the book store company by copying their device. Kindle only supports eBooks in its proprietary AZW format. Nook, on the other hand, supports both DRM-protected and DRM-free ebooks in ePub format thus it supports ebooks from B&N store, from any other DRM-free source on the web, and from public libraries. If you walk in with the Nook to Barnes & Noble store, you’re allowed to read any available eBook for free while in the store via free provided in the store Wi-Fi. Nook Color has several apps that already come with the device (Pandora Internet radio, QuickOffice, etc.) and hundreds of other apps are available for download. Also, you can use the Social Settings screen to link your NOOK Color to your Facebook account and your Twitter account. You can also import all your contacts from your Google Gmail account. Once you have linked to Facebook and Twitter and set up email contacts, you can lend and borrow books, recommend books, and share favorite quotes with your friends. Nook store has over 2 million of paid books and about the same number of free public domain books.
I can see Amazon tablet as an extension but definitely not as a replacement of existing Kindle family. The primary advantage of dedicated e-book readers - long battery life - is just not there.
until they learn that Apple's secret isn't "marketing".
Apple is quite happy for you to continue to rattle away about iSheep and marketing because as long as you do, you will NEVER threaten their market share. So, yeah, have fun with that.
I can't see how this competes with the iPad with only 6GB of local storage. The Kindle only has 3GB, but it's only storing text. 6GB just doesn't cut it when they position this as a general media player, not when accessing more of your data/content is dependent on wi-fi availability tm get at the Amazon cloud services. I was looking forward to this as a possible competitor to the iPad, and while this article and others suggest it may be, I just don't see it. There's no way I can guarantee I'll only want to use this in places where I can get wi-fi, especially when traveling for business or pleasure. It may keep the price down, and result in silly articles like this that say it's low price and Amazon brand name make it a competitor to the iPad. In reality though it doesn't compete or compare at all - much less storage, no camera, dependent on access to the cloud for effective usability. When I read the MG Siegler article a few weeks ago that this article includes a link to I lost any interest in the Kindle tablet. I'll stick to the dedicated reader version of the Kindle I already have and either get an iPad 2 or wait for the iPad 3. It's a shame though. A viable alternative would be nice if only to give Apple a competitor that might keep them innovating and improving the iPad.
Well, well... add to the price a free 3G worldwide for Amazon shopping, basic internet services (probably Facebook) and you have a killer for an iPad. 6GB, not much, but hey, I have an iPad 16GB and use maybe 1/3 of it, mostly for useless crap, like videos I am not going to see. Give the people an Amazon rent-a-book service (share-a-book - connect it with Facebook) and it will be coup the grace.
A) Make it cheaper than all the other tablets. Corner the market by throwing money at it. Make a $150 tablet that is every bit as functional as a netbook, and watch them sell like hot cakes.
B) Make it boot stock Cyanogenmod. Also have it be able to run Linux Mint and also Windows XP. Don't include them by default, but have them runnable out of the box. Easily runnable. None of this rooting crap. Include links to the custom Linux and ReactOS distros right in the opening tutorial. Give it an easily triple boot boot loader.
C) Include a couple of killer apps that don't currently exist. A really good video chat, at least as good as google's video chat, but with no sign in, just any email address would work, and anybody in your contact list is already added to your buddy list. For good measure have it able to connect to skype, google+, and google talk video chat.
D) Give it stylus capability and a great GIMP/airbrush program that really works, really well out of the box.
E) Include an excellent ereader and every text out of copyright downloadable for free in an easy to read format. Also include a great organization to find and download them. Something better than currently exists.
Do these 5 things, and you will beat them all: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, HTC, Samsung, all of them.
Ah, who am I kidding. None of these corporations are smart enough to really go big like this. Fucking chicken shit bean counters the lot of them.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.