You've completely missed the point, which is stunning because you spent most of your article outlining the point you've missed. The Kindle Fire does not compete with the iPad PERIOD. Amazon have deliberately NOT "Punched Apple Hard", because going after iPad has been shown to be a fast track to failure. Amazon is instead creating its own market for a low-cost, but not junk ware, tablet for the masses. The WHOLE POINT is that the two can and will co-exist. Nobody is trying to eat anybody else's lunch*, so there's no risk of an HP-style spectacular flameout.
*Well, except Amazon eating Google's, but it's not Amazon's fault that Google doesn't understand consumers.
Reply · 36 · · 6 hours ago
John Fernandez
agreed. how does a 7 inch piece of junk with no apps compete with a 10 inch fully-featured tablet with over 100,000 apps? the kindle fire is the size of a phone
Reply · 1 · · 6 hours ago
John Fernandez
this is a rebadged playbook. its pure junk.
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Sean Griffin · New Media Manager at Griffin and Associates
John Fernandez If your hands are so big that a 7-inch screen is the size of a phone for you, you might want to have yourself checked out by a doctor.
Reply · 64 · · 6 hours ago
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Paul Ricard · Top Commenter · HEC Paris
Given how people were siked by a $99 HP tablet that is officially off the shelves, there's no doubt a $199 tablet, which is 40% of the price of the iPad, and does (and will do more and more) much of what 90% of people expect from a tablet, will succeed. Merry Christmas (/ Black Friday / Back to School / etc.)!
Reply · 12 · · 7 hours ago
John Fernandez
noone was "psyched" about the touchpad, a small group of android losers on blogs do not represent a large group of people. cool, stores sold out of their small inventory of touchpads. that means nothing.
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Paul Ricard · Top Commenter · HEC Paris
Trust me, it does. Everybody talked about it and many people (not everybody of course) rushed into stores to get access to the small inventories. Scarcity was key here, but probably not the main element. Had they done the same thing at $299 it wouldn't have worked, even with three times less inventory. People like cheap trendy stuff. No matter what we (or "android losers"...) say, the HP tablet was, and the Kindle Fire is, too.
Reply · 4 · · 6 hours ago
Mirko Vukušić · CEO at NETMedia d.o.o. member of Mnex Group
man, millions were sold in a day. All uk webshops collapsed! That does not describe "small group" of anything
Reply · 4 · · 4 hours ago
Mary McConnell · Lafayette, California
why isn't amazon giving the Kindle away 'for free' with a $199 credit for e-books?
Reply · 12 · · 7 hours ago
Michael Quimby · Works at Sauder Woodworking
The same reason you aren't giving me all of your money.
Reply · 4 · · 3 hours ago
Michael Ashford · Cardiff
because then they would be giving away $398 worth of hardware and content :s
Reply · 3 · · 3 hours ago
Michael Quimby · Works at Sauder Woodworking
Better question lady, why isn't everything free?
Reply · 3 · · 2 hours ago
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Nik Kalyani · Western Michigan University
Kindle Fire is a yawner for Cupertino for two reasons -- consumers looking for value pricing are not the iPad's target audience and the iPad/iPhone strength is not just about content...it's about the ecosystem (think apps, developers, accessories). Building this is no small and overnight task. The Kindle Fire will succeed with those consumers who want a decent, value-priced media consumption device and nothing more. The iPad will continue to reign where people want their tablet to be an integral part of their life beyond media consumption.
Reply · 8 · · 7 hours ago
Betty Arps · Chilton, Wisconsin
Nik, it also has a browser and a native e-mail app. That's all I need when I'm not at home or the office, where I have real computers. A 3G option would be nice, but this is good enough to spring for $199. Already ordered it.
Reply · 7 · · 7 hours ago
Justin Hassler · Top Commenter · Washington, District of Columbia
Betty Arps - Typically, tablet users use them at home. A lack of 3G seriously hurts the ability to use it as a smartphone, which seems to be your goal. Of course this tablet is going to sell very well, it's the notion that iPad is now not going to sell that I find ridiculous.
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
Eric Dreher
Ah, yes. Another <fill in the Apple product name>"killer" destined for the only niche it will ever fill: Those who just hate Apple. It's amusing how frequently the media use that killer label, yet are wrong 100% of the time.
Reply · 5 · · 7 hours ago
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Mikko Alasaarela · Angel Investor, Advisor at Walkbase
I think Amazon is pulling a lot of right strings at once by creating a simplified and limited Android experience and by offering their tablet at a consumer-friendly price. There is no doubt that simple and understandable products have always wooed consumers, and Fire is the first Android Tablet that makes a whole lot of sense. Can't wait to see how others will respond during 2012.
Reply · 7 · · 7 hours ago
John S. Wilson · Top Commenter · Emory
I think this is an example of lazy writing. No compelling info is given for why a consumer interested in the iPad would purchase a Kindle Fire aside from 'well, it's cheaper.' And? Apple has never competed based on price. They sell premium products, never at margin or a loss, and don't respond to new competition with price cuts. They respond -- or even better, predict where the market is headed and cannibalize their own products (e.g., iPod Touch killed iPod, MacBook Air killed MacBook, etc., iPad also has affected Mac sales but PC sales far more) -- with innovation.
Sure, the Kindle Fire may sell very well. However, that would not be an indictment on how well the iPad does. And no, Apple wouldn't respond with a price cut on the iPad 2. The last thing Apple wants to do is to stop innovating. The iPad 3 will come out with more features, a longer lasting battery, thinner design, and increased functionality for the consumer. And Apple will keep marching forward.
What Amazon did well, and should receive kudos for is what John Gruber pointed out: they played to their strengths -- price, convenience, and content.
Reply · 6 · · 6 hours ago
Ed Hill · Works at Devry
Bad math. Amazon is showing over 16,000 apps in it's app store. That's a lot more than 1% of 100,000. If the Kindle Fire flies off the shelf like previous Kindles did (even at much higher prices), then developers are going to swarm to the Android platform. Amazon is just getting started, and I wouldn't be surprised to see full-featured tablets from them in the future. Apple just felt what it's like to have another fighter in the ring.
Reply · 6 · · 7 hours ago
John S. Wilson · Top Commenter · Emory
Are those 16,000 Amazon Android apps tablet optimized?
Reply · 5 · · 7 hours ago
Jamie Fowles
John S. Wilson agreed john, it was made clear they will only allow apps optimized for the kindle fire not just any old junk thats in the android app store. so it clearly wont be the 16,000 apps in the amazon app store
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Trent Palmer · Boring, Oregon
John S. Wilson At 7 inches, the apps don't need to be tablet optimized. Gingerbread runs just fine on a 7 inch tablet. And not only are the 16,000 apps probably the most important 16,000, but since it's an android you can probably sideload .apk's directly from code.google.com, or from a friend with a rooted phone who can extract .apk's from a titanium backup.
And it probably will be a fairly simple hack to simply enable the proprietary google apps and the android app store, if not replace the whole os with a custom rom.
Reply · 1 · · 6 hours ago
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Max Woolf · Top Commenter · Carnegie Mellon University
Damn it, I'm out of Kindle Fire puns. Already used them for the Captain Planet and Avatar: TLA jokes. :\
Reply · 4 · · 6 hours ago
Wei Zhu · Software engineer at Facebook
Jeff Bezos's words: priceless.
"There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp."
Reply · 2 · · 5 hours ago
Sa Ma · Top Commenter · San Francisco, California
Kindle Fire was not a punch, but rather a counterpunch!
iPad suddenly made kindle look so boring, sluggish and useless. So as a consumer if you were eyeing a kindle, you might have paid a a bit more to get a nice colorful beautiful machine, that you could read books on, watch movies, play games and become envy of others.
Amazon realized if they wanted to maintain their profitable e-book business, they had to build a compelling product to the iPad or they could have lost their e-book business. So Kindle Fire was a defensive move to combat the surge of iPad. That said, they were smart to realize they could not fight with iPad head on, so the 199 price might be a smart move, especially after how well the reduced priced touchpads sold.
...See More
Reply · 1 · · 3 hours ago
Shawn J Sandy
Seems a lot of you guys weren't around when the win PC evolution took out apple, what was the now famous movie quote... "you don't get it people don't care"... Yea it not as powerful, blah, balh, blah... People won't care.
Apple second problem is that other MFR's will follow suit, then they will be left at the top of the race to the lowest tablet device..... Already happened with android phones!
Reply · 1 · · 6 hours ago
Ruben Orozco · Santa Barbara, California
I agree Shawn. A lot of young peeps get all excited and say forget the rest Apple will just dominate. Like you say, just like what happend with the Android Phones
Reply · · 4 hours ago
Gabriel A. Zorrilla · Spare Parts Manager at GNC Galileo S.A.
At 200 USD will undoubtedly put some pressure to the rest of the tablet brands which is, right now, at about 500 USD on average (in the US, prices outside are much higher). Perhaps within a year we will be getting full featured Android tablets for 300 bucks because this Amazon move. It's a win for consumers (however, let's see how manufacturers will manage to get some money).
Reply · 1 · · 6 hours ago
Chadrick Fowler
I'm so excited that Amazon is getting into the tablet arena, even if it's with a media device. Their Music Cloud service blows iTunes away. Amazon truly takes the stance of trying to do things that the customer will enjoy. It won't be much more than a decade until Apple's separatist requirements of not being compatible with anything other than Apple.
Reply · 1 · · 6 hours ago
Nico Nicomedes
If the rumor mill is true and Apple unveils a cheap iPhone this October 4, I hope Apple also unveils a cheap iPad soon. That would be a killer!
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
Ruchit Garg · CEO/Founder at 9Slides
Any bets on how many Kindle fire is going to sell first year? Its going to be best selling consumer device for the sure this year.
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
Oday Nasser · Top Commenter
more than iPad and iPhone?
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
rockbandmidi (signed in using Yahoo)
No more than 1mil, likely, less than 500k. Kindle touch, millions.
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
Teri Lyn Looney · Conroe, Texas
Pretty sure I'll be wanting one....not being an Apple fan!
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
Joel Looney · Pastoral Intern, Webmaster, etc. at Vineyard Church of Conroe
ha! oh mom. :)
Reply · 1 · · 6 hours ago
Gloria Lulia · None yet
I'll take three.
Reply · 1 · · 7 hours ago
Daniel Duron · Grayslake, Illinois
Aaah, I love Amazon's music service (I used the Cloud and purchase music from their site ALL the time!) and I hear their video service is quite good as well. the problem for me, is that I had a B&N Nook and I purchased some 35 full-price books and if Amazon isn't going to allow me to read those, I'm not buying a Kindle Fire (as much as it seems awesome).
Reply · · 3 hours ago
Michael Salas
The kindle will change the market, maybe not directly, but other better spec Android tablets will feel the crunch and then lower their retails to compete during the holidays. The market share will possibly shift due to Android price wars. Then Apple might start thinking of a price cut plan when they feel the heat.
Reply · · 4 hours ago
Felipe Adams · Top Commenter · Jobs, Cellphones, Music & Deals at Digitalundivide.com
Kindle Fire will certainly put a big dent in the sale of iPads. I can't imagine Apple trying to sell the iPad 3 for $600.
The Kindle Fire will be issued on a first come, first serve basis. So now is the opportunity to get your Kindle Fire for $199 right now. http://pnoy.me/9F
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Striped Sail
The iPad has another great advantage, the ecosystem of great accessories. http://stripedsail.com/products/ipad/miframe-ipad-dock/
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Robert Oberst · Dallas Senior High School
Apple comes up with a great product and everyone copies it. Tablets, phones....."Hey let's take Apple's idea and copy it". It's one thing to have competition but it's another to be a thief.
Reply · · 7 hours ago
Mike Henderson · Fraserburgh Academy
Garbage, there were tablets and mobiles long before Apple came along and started fleecing everyone.
Reply · 8 · · 7 hours ago
Marvin Bernal · Ryerson University
So you're saying that no one is allowed to enter the tablet space?
Reply · 4 · · 7 hours ago
Thomas Henderson
So what's the difference between competing and stealing then? It's not stealing just because it's a tablet computer... I don't know what's going through your head. I'm also going to point out that apple wasn't the first to attempt a tablet computer, they were just the first to make one that sold well. Apple did not come up with the idea on their own by any stretch.
Reply · · 7 hours ago
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xfea (signed in using Yahoo)
Eric went to Publix Skool - yes? $300 less? Really......
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Peter Evers · San Francisco, California
Many Android players have tried to hit Apple with cheaper alternatives and be rebuffed by the public. Amazon is the only, and perfect player, to lead the effort. Like iPad or not robust choice is key in any CE market. Already Apple is holding back the IPad 3 b/c it simply doesn't need to cannibalize its own iPad 2 Sales (the only current real competitor). The bringers of the first really successful eBook were a natural to be the best tablet competitor as well. Nice
Reply · · 6 hours ago
Matthias Böhm
First of all, I don't want to say that the Kindle Fire is bad device. No, I am sure it is awesome and could really kick ass but as long as the Kindle Fire is only sold in the U.S. and the iPad is sold worldwide, Amazons punch to Apple is more like a very gentle poke...
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