I can see why Amazon has gone down this path, but I do wonder if it's the right thing, rather than doing everyone's favorite/most hated carrier-specific bolt-ons instead. I also hope that Amazon doesn't give up on color e-ink, because reading on a Kindle is so much nicer.
If any API incompatibilities emerge (beyond the normal API level that Android uses to distinguish between release APIs) then developers will be forced to fork their own products and maintain 2 separate release channels -- one for the Android market and one for the Kindle market.
Beyond that, Android will continue to fly ahead with each release and the Kindle won't be able to keep up without significant time pulling and merging changes from upstream. I'm not looking forward to continually only having access to last years apps because the Kindle is a year behind the mainline Android release.
Unless Amazon goes through the Android certification process, and keeps their "fork" as a pure UI modification, I'm going to pass on this. It might be bright and shiny on day 1, but on day 365 it could be a different story.
There's a big market out there for people who just want to read a book. They don't want to GPS with Google Maps, they don't want to install Yelp, or Trulia, or GrubHub apps. They just want to read, listen to music, and watch a video when they're on the bus or on the couch.
Amazon has done well by providing focus to the Kindle. Where I commute it's more popular than the iPad. They may someday decide to take Apple head-on with an Android tablet, but it's not gonna be this year.
This might mean a focus on magazine/more graphically designed newspapers, perhaps distributed through the Kindle Store, that take advantage of the nature of the Tablet's screen; but at the very least it will have to be a tablet with an exceptionally capable browser.
Mom 'n' pop users don't care about "apps". They want books, email, web browsing, music, free streaming movies, and whatever silly game is popular at the moment (Angry Birds, Sudoku, and Bejeweled). A Kindle tablet can do all of these.
You buy a Kindle because you want to read books, if you really wanted all those other features you would buy an iPad which is actually good at them.
Amazon is an online:
* media retailer * department store retailer * book seller * catalog warehouse (third-party resellers)
They have broad distribution agreements with thousands upon thousands of merchants in all product spaces (including media). No other tablet manufacturer (not even Apple) has the kind of vertical reach that Amazon does.
Amazon is also a pioneer in understanding the way their customers shop for products. Amazon's iOS apps are some of the coolest shopping applications I've used. Scan a bar code of a product at a store, and instantly find out if you can buy it cheaper on Amazon. Usually you can. That's smart. They constantly refine their website to fit customer usage patterns. They know how their customers behave, and they know how to adapt to customer change.
Remember when the iPad came out and geeks everywhere united in sentiment that it would fail. "It doesn't run a full desktop, OS!!! It's doomed to fail!!!" That's a caricature of tech punditry at the time of the iPad launch. Today, the iPad is way out front. All those arguments sound eerily familiar to:
"If any API incompatibilities emerge (beyond the normal API level that Android uses to distinguish between release APIs) then developers will be forced to fork their own products and maintain 2 separate release channels..."
This is all geek speak. Turns out, the market doesn't really care.
Amazon, like Apple, isn't trying to enter a market, they're trying to create one.
I'm not smart enough to know if they'll be successful, but if you look at Amazon as a company, they're an entirely different animal from Apple, Google, or Samsung. I think they have the tools to make it happen, but it will ultimately come down to execution.
As for forking, I'm guessing it's not really a fork. It's just got their own UI on top, but they'll continue to get the rest of the updates from Google.
I would posit that they believe people care about apps a great deal, and that Amazon would like to be positioned to make some money from that demand, either through a cut of sales or by making their hardware more attractive since it "has apps."
They're the original kings of one-click buying, before Apple even sold apps. They'll make a killing and so will any developers who hitch their wagon to Amazon's strategy.