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How Will Amazon, Barnes & Noble Survive the iPad Mini?
redletterdave writes "For about a year, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble were almost completely alone in the 7-inch tablet market. It was nice while it lasted. The past few months have seen Google and Microsoft unveil their 7-inch tablet offerings — the Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface, respectively — and it looks like Apple is about ready to get into the mini tablet game, too. If Apple releases its first 'iPad Mini' next month, what can Amazon and Barnes & Noble do to keep the Cupertino colossus at bay, as well as the other new competitors in the 7-inch tablet game?"
I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.
Who cares about a possible iPad Mini that isn't drinking the Kool-Aid already? Just another iOS device, they already come with a range of displays, connectivity, etc. If you have already bought into the iOS ecosystem you might want one, otherwise not so much. What other OEM adding a new screen size would be a major story on /.? Newsflash! Dell adds new display option to their laptop line, discuss.
And for that matter, I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly. I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control. And to a great extent I toss the new Google Nexus 7 (by Asus) into the same pile.
Look around and you can buy tablets in any size, build quality and price that can be unlocked, accept removable media, even boot from that external media. Want one with a keyboard? Yup. Good cameras, sensors, etc. How much ya willing to pay? In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.
Just don't expect to buy a computer from a media company and get anything useful. Which is what B&N and Amazon are, Apple is in the process of becoming and Google is greatly desiring to be.
[1] Well not subsidized from Apple of course, there you pay more for the chains... but they are just so stylish!
Democrat delenda est
Put the focus back where it belongs for their particular devices - Eink.
There are a ton of people who don't want to look at yet another computer screen when they are reading, which is why those people (me included) go for the Eink devices instead of the 7" tablets.
That is the space that made them popular, and that is the space they need to put the focus back on as a differentiating - and positive selling - factor.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
The Kindle hardware is just a channel to sell e-books. If Kindle hardware sales dry up due to competition from other tables, it's not a problem as long as the other devices that people buy support the Kindle App.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
They'll survive because nobody with two brain cells to rub together enjoys reading on a backlit and always-refreshing screen.
Spoken by a person reading slashdot on a "backlit and always-refreshing screen".
Amazon, B&N and all the others will survive because they have E-ink screens, which are far superior (and, sadly, more expensive) for their specialized purpose.
If people wanted a color 7" tablet to do more than just reading, e-readers would have been gone from the market already. The only benefit a dedicated e-reader has over one of those cheap 7" no-name Android tablets is the screen. Even the cheapest Android tablet outperforms an e-reader in every way... except the screen.
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Most Apple customers these days aren't part of the fanbase. They're just regular people lately.
Tablet computers are becoming a commodity. A 7" tablet from China is only $70. On Amazon, you can now get Android tablets from $60. Since the Allwinner ARM system on a chip came out for $7, with no US intellectual property to run up the price, the compute power in low-end tablets has been quite impressive. Tablet computers are going to be something you buy in a blister pack at the convenience store.
How will Apple, with all their expensive stores on expensive real estate, and a business built on huge markups, deal with that? Their pricing is around $400, over five times the price of the competition. They can't maintain that margin.
There's a market for luxury items. The CEO of Rolex says "We are not in the watch business, we are in the luxury business. The volumes are small. Apple is too big a company to take that route. Apple may have to try coming out with lower-priced lines to compete.
No, it's not. Books - especially fiction books - are 99% text with the most basic layout possible, and minimal typesetting differences throughout the book. Your typical website has a far more complicated layout and typesetting requirements, often uses color, and generally requires scrolling (rather than page flipping) to conveniently read. Not to mention the whole interactive angle with clicking links; books only have an occasional footnote.
I get really tired of this frame of stories that assume Apple is the alpha and the omega.
When you start out like that you just look uninformed.
The fact is you should care if Apple is entering a niche because it means that other options may well dry up.
I don't really care about the Amazon or Nook tablets because they are trying to run the same Apple game plan, poorly
Poorly? Both seem to have done really well. Amazon has a tablet that lets people easily hook into the benefits of the media Amazon provides, and they have done a good job of selling devices.
I don't want to semi-buy a tethered device that is more a tethered window into it's owner's cloud than a computer that [I] control.
All of these tablets are computers you can easily control. Why then ignore the very real benefits that derive from the tablet maker also offering a hook into convenient cloud services?
iCloud will happily back up a jailbroken iPad as easily as a non-jailbroken iPad...
In other words, tablet computers instead of iPad clones. You can keep your subsidized[1] media players; I'm a nerd and I buy computers.
You claim you are a nerd, yet you discard the best hardware on the market (not just Apple), hardware that as you admit is perhaps cheaper through subsidization - that you don't even have to use!
A true nerd doesn't care what features a device ships with, just how much control they have over a device and what the hardware is. The iPad is as controllable a device as anything after jailbreaking - which even non-nerds can do, yet it seems to be too intimidating for you.
Weak sauce man. If you want be a nerd or hacker, be that - but don't proclaim some hardware is beyond your nerd-love simply because of extra features targeting the masses that you don't even have to activate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And there are cheaper music players than iPods, and cheaper laptops than MacBooks, and yet somehow Apple has turned into the biggest company on the planet than isn't a bank or oil concern. Apple is selling more and more computers, phones, and tablets year over year, every year. (The only thing that's going down is their iPod sales because everyone's buying iPhones instead.) The whole market is growing--people are buying tablets who never bought computers, and cell phones are literally going to hit the points where 99% of the PLANET owns one. (Did you know their iPhone business--something that didn't even exist five years ago--is bigger than the entirety of Microsoft?)
Apple is not a niche, small-volume luxury company like Rolex. You're comparing a multi-hundred dollar, multi-feature device to a multi-thousand dollar, single-function device--of course Rolex is going to have orders of magnitude less volume.
I always laugh when posts like yours get high "Insightful" mods. You're cherry-picking all these little facts here and there while ignoring the hundred-billion-dollar elephant in the room.
> How will Apple, with all their expensive stores on
> expensive real estate, and a business built on
> huge markups, deal with that?
LOL. Have you ever heard "you've got to spend money to make money"? Apple retail stores have the highest profit per square foot ratio of any retail chain by a HUGE margin. (Almost 2x higher than #2, Tiffany.) And it's been like that for five years.
Also: you really think all these companies with razor-thin margins are going to thrive in Apple's place? You can ask Dell how well that strategy worked for them long-term. And have you ever used a generic tablet? I have, and they all suck in every way you can imagine. Apple's resources give them the ability to make things people actually want.
I'm not saying Apple will reign forever, but it will take them a LONG time to fall.
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