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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."
Amazon's competition here is B&N or rather Amazon is introducing a product to compete with B&N's offering. Apple is in a completely different area.
Most likely, Kindle color will be similar to Nook color, which probably means that any locking they do will be easily removed.
I heard they had a custom fork of Android that replaced all the Google services with their own. Their own app store, music service, etc.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
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.
We'll have to see what Amazon does; but B&N has been about as far from "locking" as one is likely to find among android devices. By default, they'll try to boot from the (external) microSD slot first, then the internal flash if they don't find anything bootable. Aside from the usual peculiarities of embedded ARM boards, it's almost like dealing with a real computer!
Amazon's competition here is B&N or rather Amazon is introducing a product to compete with B&N's offering. Apple is in a completely different area.
Amazon and iTunes are competing on Music and Video downloads. If they're tossing the E-Ink display, they most certainly are competing with Apple.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
$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
Three words: Nook Color killer. Then, if they're smart, they'll turn a blind eye to the root'n'ROMmers, B&N did, only this is hopefully more capable hardware. Then to put the icing on the B&N cake, they'll come out with an e-ink touchscreen Kindle and reduce the Kindle 3 down to $99 or $79 with ads. Win.
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.
B&N seems entirely more committed to openness and interoperability than Amazon. The Kindle can't use EPUB files for instance (and no, the existance of Calibre doesn't make up for Amazon trying to lock down its platform, no matter how much Amazon's apologists wish it would). I seriously doubt we'll ever see the same level of hardware openness from Amazon that we see from B&N.
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.
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.
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.