“The No. 1 thing consumers do on tablets is e-mail,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst. “The No. 2 thing is look up stuff on the Web...."
Apple loves to tout sales numbers for the app store but this jibes with my own experience. It's nice to have a healthy stock of third-party apps to choose from but if your core email, web, & fb/twitter apps are solid you're 90% there for most users and can start chopping secondary features and specs to undercut the iPad.
I mostly use my Touchpad for email. Some web browsing. Games for the kids. I plan to install android when I can though. All platforms have decent email experiences, web browsing on a tablet is actually highly overrated. Its really native apps that differentiate the experience, and its native apps that can be a joy to use.
FWIW, the Touchpad's (WebOS) browser is even worse than the Android browser (even Google often fails to render in it, since they released Google+, yielding horribly hilarious results); if you were using Android or iOS you might not feel the same away about browsing on the tablet being "highly overrated".
Except for Flash, which in my eperience is consistently excellent on the Touchpad browser, much better than the browsers on the Android tablets I've tried, and as for iOS, well Flash really isn't an "issue"...
Could be, I have used other devices. I find most web pages aren't especially easy to interact with on a touch device. Links are too small to touch and mobile versions are made for much smaller devices.
I hope that doesn't mean they're abandoning development on their e-ink devices, or relegating them to third-class citizens. The only reason I'd buy a reading device is if staring at it for 2+ hours didn't give me a headache like a backlit tablet does. (And an all-purpose tablet like an iPad still doesn't interest me enough to buy anyway.)
I'm watching this introduction with an eye on the long-running theory that the standard Kindle will drop to $0 by November.
For those unaware, the pricing v. price-drop dates graph has the Kindle on a straight-line path to $0 by November 2011. Word is when Amazon CEO was asked about that, he responded "ah, someone noticed" and changed the subject. How, when & whether this will happen is interesting.
Bezos was around for the CueCat scanner. He will not drop the price to zero. He knows that would be giving free hardware to anyone who can find out how to jailbreak a device.
"Free with Prime membership" seems the vector for controlling access to "free" stuff from Amazon. Arguably not "free" in all terms, but akin to "free phone" with cellular service.
Have you tried the various OLED (AMOLED, SAMOLED etc.) devices? When showing black they are effectively off, so white (or green or gray) on black text is relatively soothing.
My main reading use case is in bed at night. I have a little booklight for reading actual paper books, but I think I'm waiting for an AMOLED 8" tablet for e-book reading. It works pretty darn well for my phone in low light conditions. (In fact the main competition for an 8" tablet would be one of those giant 5" phones with AMOLED).
Sometimes, OLED screens are even worse than your average LCD. For example, the Galaxy S has beautiful colors and the bright of a thousand suns, but it's awful for simple white-on-black text. The glyphs are very irregular and have jaggies. I think it's because of the PenTile arrangement of the pixels: http://pentileblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/pentile-sh...
I have an OLED device, with probably the cheapest version of this technology available, it's using pentile, and I haven't noticed the issue with white text on black though it is occasionally noticeable (though never annoying) to me in other contexts. My device does have a small screen and therefore a relatively high pixel density though. Until the jump to Super AMOLED HD a lot of phones seemed to be putting the same pixel density (and pentile arrangement) on phones with screens an inch bigger e.g. my device is 266ppi vs 233ppi for the Galaxy S.
People seem to get a bit religious about pentile. It doesn't make any sense to dismiss (or accept) it without considering all the other parameters. It's designed to make it easier and cheaper to hit certain resolutions and densities. If I could get more pixels or density for the same money then I'd happily take pentile. If there's not much extra gain over not using it, or not much extra cost, then I'd happily leave it out. It also, for whatever technical reason, seems mostly to be associated with OLED technologies, though OLED does not necessarily imply pentile. I think Samsung brands their non-pentile AMOLEDs as SAMOLED plus and they have them either on the market or due very soon in both big phone, massive phone and mid-size tablet varieties.
However, OLED does have the one advantage I mentioned about reading in the dark which decides this for me. For that reason alone I personally am waiting for a sufficiently high-density AMOLED tablet for reading purposes. Pentile will be just one factor in weighing up my options, certainly not a deal breaker.
"We're trying to remove the barrier between 'I want that' and 'I have it'." - Sam Hall, Amazon's director of wireless products and service
I don't know about others, but my consumption of digital music from Amazon increased by about $20 a month within just a few weeks of them adding their Amazon Cloud Drive Player and their one-click purchase that dumps the album directly and instantaneously into the Cloud Drive.
With an Amazon tablet, I can see something similar happening for digital video.
Unfortunately for Amazon, selling other people's content is far less lucrative than selling your own high-end devices. I'd venture to say that their only way of making a sustainable/profitable business is some sort of ad-supported model.
Many people keep holding up the videogame console model as a way to beat the iPad - sell the hardware at a loss, profit from software and licencing - but it doesn't work in the era of $1/freemium megahits and ad-supported web apps. Trying to make money off of movies/music/books is even more difficult. Piracy will always be easy and the competition among middlemen (Rdio, Spotify, Google, Apple, Netflix, the content companies themselves) is even more cut-throat than the software platform business.
Because Apple want a 30% cut of all content sold via the iPad, which represents a larger margin than Amazon can afford to give away whilst remaining a profitable distributor.
Why not let Apple sell the devices and Amazon sell the content? Great question. It does seem efficient, what with comparative advantage and all.
Because then then that's an experience that's either customer-integrated or concessionary.
A customer-integrated experience means bringing your own food to the stadium, maybe from the place across the street. That's what MP3 players were like before the iTunes Music Store. Dedicated experts love customer-integrated experiences, but they're the only ones.
A concessionary experience means renting the stadium's food stand to the highest bidder. The highest bidders are either cheapskates or have deeper business motives. The best case is that they just want to expose consumers to some other brand. But when the parties have overlapping interests, things get messy and unstable (i.e. Google on Yahoo, otherwise a great win for users).
These types of experiences both have an annoying tendency to suck out loud.
Apple's mastery in creating great integrated experiences is one of Steve Jobs' greatest legacies. It's something great creators strive to do and customers are happy to pay for.
If Apple were to move away from providing a well-integrated experience, they'd be moving away from not only their key strength but their key value to their users.
I'm hoping Amazon will have a pretty good hook. I want to be excited to buy one. However, the kindle book offering is not enough. I love the kindle, but the kindle app is already fantastic on the iPad. So I don't need a new kindle tablet. Give me something new, Amazon. Or open up the developer program and let us help you.
If you have an iPad already, you're not Amazon's primary target. That said, the 7" "mini-tablet" form factor might be one hook. It's actually a great size, great for reading, and I like taking mine to meetups where I just want web access and a little twitter. 7" tablets also fit in handbags and more pockets than most people realize (like back pocket of most of my jeans!).
Up to now, these devices have mostly been way too expensive - close to iPad prices - or cheapo devices (apad/hipad) with serious shortcomings, e.g. No Android market and ancient versions of the OS. In my case, I paid £160 for a device with poor quality control, had to return it as the wifi was broken. I changed my Google password a while ago, which broke Market and GMail and means I have to hard-reset in order to install any new apps. (There was no error message from those programs and had to trawl through forums to work out why there exiting immediately.) So tne 7" devices today have not exactly provided the out-of-the-box iPad experience.
"it's all about the software" as many hardware people say these days. If Amazon can build a smooth user interface, it will be the first inexpensive mini-tablet which "just works".
Some of the rumors make it interesting--free Prime membership namely. That ties it in with all the free streaming video they have which Apple has no match for.
I have a Kindle and iPad and use them for different things, I found the iPad isn't very good for book reading, it's too heavy, too bright and the battery life isn't good enough. On the other hand I can read from the kindle just like I would read from a paperback.
The only thing I would like to see from Amazon is a larger display version that is suitable for technical books.
The one thing I like about Amazon ebooks is that you can set your country as USA, and than use any credit card to buy American ebooks. I hope that continues with Amazon's tablet and the video and other content they'll be selling, as American digital prices and content selection are cheaper and wider than anywhere else in the world.
Of course, the RIAA and MPAA of the world's will be fighting tooth and nail over regional restrictions, I have a feeling Amazon made it easy to bypass regional restrictions because book publishers are technologically challenged and didn't quite realize what happened.
Of course, there is always the piratebay for countries which aren't in the G7...
I'm just not ready to bet against Apple. I think we're at the point where the only way for anyone to take any significant chunk of profit from Apple's [growing] core business, is for Apple to have a couple significant missteps.
There's no reason to think Android tablets wont overtake the iPad in future. However, the key difference between the tablet and smartphone spaces is that the masses recognise there are smartphones other than the iPhone.
Apple created the tablet market, and consumers know it. The iPhone had a big impact on the smartphone market, but it didn't create it.
Apple earned itself 6-12 months of 100% ownership of the tablet market. People don't yet understand that there are any tablets apart from the iPad. Or, if they do, there will be a belief that the Android tablets are crap because they know that they're just following the success of the iPad.
I think it will take another two or three years before we start seeing tablets become a commodity, as the market begins to recognise the other tablets out there. Or, if this Amazon tablet is a success, then they might be a commodity by next Christmas :)
> "There's no reason to think Android tablets wont overtake the iPad in future."
Except that Android devices never went anywhere as media players. Nothing did, compared to the iPod. Even well after they were seen as a commodity and certainly not for lack of awareness of non-iPod competitors.
And the iPad is loved/used as much more of a big media player than a big phone.
So while Android devices certainly may overtake the iPad, the iPod market presents a great argument that they very well might not. At least not until an OEM puts some serious thought and consideration into the media experience.
I agree..and at that point, Apple might be on the verge of defining an entire product category, which the rest of the market will follow 3+ years thereafter.
I have no doubt that at some point they'll slow down..but like I said in my OP, I'm not ready to bet against them yet.
I can attest that HN and Reddit Programming readership use iDevices at twice the rate they use Android devices, based on a sample size of 30,000 this weekend.
This didn't surprise me in the least. The people I know who use Android are either the people who can't afford iPhones (and kick up a huge fuss about paying for any content) or people who love tinkering with them.
...how is that relevant, though? Android phones are outselling iPhones. What the HN/Reddit crowd does isn't really very relevant to the rest of the world.
humm..it's a bit like saying that your chance of building a successful search engine, without Google first doing something incredibly stupid, are pretty slim.
There's a billion precedents. GM, 3dfx, pre-tick-tock Intel, George Lucas.
The problem with going up against Google is that they offer a superior product to end-users for free. I have no doubt that the iPad will remain a superior product to the Amazon Tablet. However, I also have no doubt it will keep costing more than the Amazon tablet. Consumers care about that extra ~$250.
Like Google, the iPad is currently the low-end and the high-end of the market, but unlike Google, it's vulnerable on the low-end. That's where Amazon will attack it and with ~100 million customers, their credit card numbers ready to go, good brand-loyalty, a huge content store, and so much experience in on-line/cloud services that even Apple uses them, they'll likely have quite a bit of success.
Notice that in my OP, I said "take any significant chunk of _profit_". I'm not as concerned about marketshare as I am about profit. Yes, Android devices are outselling iPhones, but they are generating considerably less profit.
I don't know the latest figures, but iPhones relatively small market share accounted for over 50% of profits last time I saw. Amazon might sell a lot of cheap tablets, but that won't hurt Apple's profits.
Apple don't have a relatively small market share in smartphones. Asymco likes to quote the mobile phone, not the smartphone numbers to make this stat sound more impressive than it is.
If you do that then it's something like 4% of unit sales share giving 50% of profit. If you exclude people selling millions of throwaway cellphones for pennies and only include HTC, RIM and the smartphone parts of Nokia, Samsung etc. then the profit they make (while still better than the industry average, thanks to RIM and Nokia pulling it down) is much more closely tied to market share and therefore seems much more under threat as Android advances on that front.
None of those missteps are on their core products. I'm talking something like Xbox 360's 33% failure rate (which doesn't even seem to have damaged their brand at all, surprisingly).
At this point, their brand is so strong, you'd need something huge...I can't even think of anything besides serious failure rates on iPhones or iPads.
Apple TV is doing well for a "hobby" compared to Google TV. and Ping's failure is not hurting Apple at all. Amazon however, does not nearly have as much cash and resources as Apple or Google. if Amazon fails in this it can potentially hurt their bottom line.
Imagine this. One prime account that would give you netflix like access to all the music, books and movies from amazon's library. Music and Video is pretty much at par with the rest of the iTunes competitors already and once Amazon gathers enough momentum, the book publishers will bow and then Amazon Prime will hold so much value, it wouldn't be sensible to not have one.
Apple has 75% of the tablet market, Samsung is gaining quickly as a formidable competitor (specially after the Apple/Samsung European showdown which gave more exposure to the compatibility of Samsung).
Amazon might throw a lot of money at it, but my money is on Samsung & Apple battling it out. I think Amazon is doing this because Apple shut them out from their App store.
Amazon's already invested a lot in the Android platform with the Amazon Appstore and all the other assorted Amazon Android apps. Considering that migrating to WebOS would require Amazon to:
(a) actually obtain the rights to WebOS (whereas Android they can just fork a version from git),
(b) retool all their existing app infrastructure to support WebOS, and
(c) promoting WebOS to developers when probably the only WebOS device that would be available to them would be the new Kindle and the fire-saled Touchpads,
I don't really see them moving to WebOS, or away from Android in general, anytime soon.
It's funny that the general incompetence of HP's new leader is one of the factors which led to Amazon's success over the years, especially with third-party suppliers. Unless they arranged to buy the OS outright (very unlikely given their existing commitments), we won't see it.
> [The iPad has] set off a revolution in progress about how entertainment and other media are consumed.
Is this really true ? I know I'm a bit provincial but I don't know anyone with an iPad and have only ever seen anyone with one TV. I'm not even sure my friend who works in the Apple store has one at home (he's never mentioned it and he's the kind who would).
EDIT I got my reply from asking him. It's revolutionised how entertainment and other media are consumed in his house.
me: how do you like it ?
he: Very much. Lou uses it all the time ... She hasn't used a pc since.
What's the value add other than tight integration with Amazon Cloud, etc. ? is it compelling enough for most users to ditch the Xoom, Touch Pad, Galaxy Tab, etc. over this tablet?
Most users aren't on any of those, Amazon could have a good quarter and sell more of their tablet than all of those combined.
That said, it's going to be half (or even less) the price and have seamless access to a very wide array of content. I don't think they're worried about the Xoom, or the discontinued TouchPad and or the new Galaxy Tab that's illegal to sell in most major markets... They're clearly leveling up against the iPad.
Apple loves to tout sales numbers for the app store but this jibes with my own experience. It's nice to have a healthy stock of third-party apps to choose from but if your core email, web, & fb/twitter apps are solid you're 90% there for most users and can start chopping secondary features and specs to undercut the iPad.