Apple phones push iTunes and iBooks (soon Beats), and you can't buy Amazon digital content in the Amazon apps because they don't want to pay Apple the 30% tax. Either way Apple will always encourage you to buy from Apple's storefronts.
Google pushes Google Play for music and books. Similarly it's in Google's interest to push people to the Google storefronts.
Apple and Google make up basically 100% of the smartphone/tablet market. If Amazon doesn't get in there they may slowly get pushed out. They don't lead in music (iTunes?) or video (iTunes/Netflix?) or apps (Apple's store), and they certainly don't want to lose their position in books.
If Amazon wanted to lead in music they could try this crazy new strategy called: offer a quality product.
You're Amazon. You ARE datacenters. So why the ever-living-hell can I not buy FLAC-encoded lossless tracks? There is an utterly negligible cost in providing this content, its the only market which still moves CDs so there's obviously demand, but no one is touching it?
Simple, less than 1% of the population can hear the difference (and I'm not convinced the remainder isn't sampling error.) - I'm certain as soon as there is a overwhelming demand for it, Amazon will support it.
I'd point out, that Apple doesn't event support its own lossless codec for downloads, and they are arguably the market leader.
Actually, the reverse. Apple's goal is to sell more hardware; software/music/books/videos just exist to draw users into the ecosystem and keep them there. Apple doesn't care where you get your content (though iTunes & iBooks makes it more "sticky"), so long as you use Apple hardware and buy more of it. That iTunes & iBooks & etc make Apple truckloads of cash is just a bonus.
Google's MO is to gather as much info as possible. Selling music & books just gives Google more data to mine. Again, the truckloads of cash is a great bonus.
Amazon, however, is all about selling content. The Kindle line (Fire phone included) exist just to persuade customers to buy more - hence the magic find-and-buy-this button and other cart-greasing features.
Do Apple really push it though? I mean I have an iPad and survive very well with all my real physical CDs instead of music from iTunes. It isn't like it pushes you to buy from them or notifies you to buy.
Am I right in remembering that the old Amazon tablets used to advertise on the lock screen?
BTW, I didn't realise that they were renaming iBooks to a daft name like Beats. Thanks.
They also push iBooks the app (it cannot be uninstalled anymore in iOS 8), but you can just buy DRM-free books on O'Reilly or download PDFs and sync them between Mac and iPad.
I don't have an Amazon tablet, but my Kindle has ads for completely uninteresting books right on the home screen.
I don't think it's complicated, they see a lot of money in media sales and want to have a set of devices where they are the more visible provider.
A few hundred million dollars developing hardware is a rounding error on their current media revenues (which I realize sounds a bit ridiculous, but there it is).
Amazon had razor thin margins because they're spending hundreds of millions on a bunch of different projects that they expect will be the the future of collecting money for stuff and services.
If they stopped that investment, they'd be reasonably profitable. But right now, it's funding their world domination plans.
I fully understand that Amazon invests in these types of projects because they are focusing on growth. The original claim was that hundreds of millions of dollars is a trivial amount of money for Amazon to spend even if a project is a failure. I was simply stating that this is not the case at all. If Amazon has spent 100s of millions of dollars on a smartphone program that turns out to be a failure then it is going to be a painful experience for them.
I'm not saying that Amazon has spent $100 million+ on smartphones. I'm also not saying that the project is a failure. I'm simply responding to the hypothetical claim that 100s of millions of dollars isn't a significant amount of money to Amazon.
They spent $6.5 billion on "Technology and content" in 2013. $100 million is ~1.5% of that. So not quite a rounding error, but close. They also spent ~$5 billion in 2012 and I guess they will spend a similar amount this year.
(That segment includes all sorts of spending, but in the 2013 annual report they do call out devices as one of the focuses of that spending)
I see it as zon just beefing up their mobile abilities: build know in android and top level mobile software, lay the groundwork for future dev, as mobile grows just like pc grew but way more, your ability to take advantage of mobile growth improves. This phone stuff is just a learning curve, and as hardware decreases in cost over time, zon can get a foothold and take advantage.
