Speculation on an Amazon iPad Competitor | Hacker News Reader

Speculation on an Amazon iPad Competitor

marco.org

78 pointsuptown31 comments

When I was at the iTMS, the only competitor that anybody was afraid of was Amazon. I'm certain that that awareness hasn't changed in the last few years.

The Amazon MP3 album downloader thing is SO kludgy =( I think AMZN gets the broad strokes right but their details are just not top-shelf.

I agree. I think even the website, while a great overall shopping experience and basically synonmyous for me with online shopping, has a lot of issues graphic design -wise as well as usability stuff like drilling down into categories and sorting by different/multiple criteria.

I bet they do end user support way better than Google, though.

If you think that is bad, did you every try the Amazon Unbox video downloader? Horrendous performance to this day.

As for the Kindle app for the PC, Mac, and iOS, love it.

Amazon is capable of producing high quality products, but they really need to be careful about letting crap be released. It can do irreversible damage to your brand.

I don't think this is true. Auctions definitely didn't put any nails in Amazon's coffin.

It's kludgy, but you only use it for the short while necessary to download an album. On the other hand, I can't remotely stand iTunes. I even go through the pain to remove it from my Mac.

And maybe the broad stroke here will be their Cloud Player/Drive, which has no download step.

Which btw, should be attributed to top management and middle management, respectively.

Amazon's core is the book model. People forget the two parts of even a paper book: content and delivery ("reader"). The reader part is so cheap people never think about it ... hence Amazon's focus on building an e-reader so cheap that customers won't think about it.

So while everyone else is making expensive tablets which customers must choose between, Amazon is making a tablet so cheap it will be ubiquitous. Sure, they'll improve it and add other media capabilities etc but the focus is on CHEAP.

When you buy a paper book, you get a reader without thinking about it. That's where Amazon is going for ebooks.

> Amazon's core is the book model.

Is it? It used to be, but I don't think their core is still concentrated on books. Go to Amazon, look at the left menu, where is Books? It isn't at the top.

Could Amazon fork Android? They're big enough and have enough engineering horsepower to do it. It feels like this is what they'd need to do to be confident that Android is feasible in the long run, since I think their cloud services/advertising and Google's eventually go head-on.

With the Amazon Appstore (one word, remember), I thought Android would become a lot more interesting, if Amazon made a phone for themselves that leverages the store, so it isn't as fragmented and unintelligible as "Android phones in general".

I'm sure Google wouldn't mind supporting their efforts.

As for a tablet, I don't really get where they're going with this; if I were them, I'd at least wait and let the other manufacturers test the waters first.

I don't think folks are talking about a phone - they're expecting a tablet. Amazon is already essentially the #2 player in the tablet market but they have no footprint in the phone market. I suspect they'd be perfectly happy leaving the phone market to other Android vendors and simply providing a Kindle reader app.

It doesn't seem like the other vendors are doing a very good job of "testing the waters". By the time they're done messing around, it might be too late. Seems like this is the year to either do it or not.

Eh, I think it's relevant to delineate e-readers like Kindle from app-centric tablets, "tAPPlets", like, say, the iPad.

E-ink readers are great on their own for obvious reasons and don't have to compete directly with the iPad. I don't know how well an app-centric Amazon tablet would do against Apple.

Amazon probably has the money to dip their feet and fail, but how well are any of the competitors doing by comparison?

They also obviously have an absurd customer base to tap, and they already have Kindle, on-demand video and rentals, but I don't know if that is going to cut it. If they focus on being cheaper, maybe, but good luck with that. It would be interesting if they partnered with Readability, at least just as a cute "fuck you" to Apple.

They'll have to focus a little differently or frame their device in an interesting way. Time will tell.

The fact that everyone else is doing a horrific job at making a tablet is a bigger sign, to me, that Amazon has a shot at pulling it off.

One thing that stuck out to me recently is that on Amazon's left sidebar digital content is now on the top. If Amazon loses their battle over state sales tax then they need something that puts them on a level playing field and that is going to be digital content.

In my opinion the difference between e-readers and tablets will very soon be non-existent.

Barnes & Noble has had some success aiming directly between those two types of devices. The Nook Color is priced at half an iPad and just over twice a Kindle and reportedly has sold well compared to 'offical' Android tablets. I can see Amazon chasing after that slice of the pie.

>but they have no footprint in the phone market.

Except for all those 3G kindles. If they are working on a tablet, you can bet that "Whispernet" will feature prominently for delivery of music, video, and (dare I say it) a skype/facetime-like application.

That Whispernet works because the cost can easily be built into the device, or the books — ebooks aren't large downloads and therefore it's easy to set up cheap deals with carriers. After all, Kindle users won't be data hogs or cause network congestion (I say this from the view of a carrier, not that network congestion is acceptable).

Music & videos however add up fast.

Kindle delivery is baked into the rake Amazon takes off the top, along with their 30%.

If you opt or prince into the 35% royalty model (i.e., 65% to AMZN) then they are graciously willing to absorb that cost themselves.

I don't even think they would need to do it in house - if they can offer all of the on-line services that Google offers - gmail, maps, an app store etc, then Android vendors could use that as a way of distinguishing their offering from that of other Android vendors. I'm thinking of Nokia specifically - it would give them something that a plain-vanilla Android wouldn't have, and it would give them the freedom to get out from under Google's thumb, and really allow them to innovate.

At this stage I really don't see Nokia going down the Android path, given their commitment to Windows Phone 7.

I'd say apple should just pull the kindle app right now and force the users to migrate to iBooks rather than do it later when Amazon provides an alternative. When(if) Amazon comes out with theirs they'll start making more demands to force apple to boot them out, at which point they'll get a bunch of kindle addicted ipad users migrating to their tablet for free.

Why would they keep this as a threat? Why not release it when it was ready? They have little to lose? And can anyone secretly bring out a tablet anymore? Not even apple can.

Yeah, but how long will it be before we get an SDK for it?

Could it be that they are stalling on the Kindle SDK because "Android is the future" or something like that?

I hope it's something that simple and good for developers. I have no real trust that it will happen.

May be the Honeycomb team thinks this too..

Mirasol. It is the answer to everything. Alas, I have it on good authority that it is not happening his year.

So move along, nothing to see here.

It’s nice technology but not really the answer to anything. For one, great tablets are already possible without that technology, it would merely be an incremental improvement. You don’t need a Mirasol display in the living room or the kitchen (except insofar as power savings are concerned). And: one technology doesn’t make the product. Especially tablets can only be great if the right technologies are combined in the right way. There are no miracle cures.

For reference: mirasol, the amazing color display technology http://www.mirasoldisplays.com/demo

What about Pixel Qi? http://www.pixelqi.com/products

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