If you haven't noticed, creating and executing mobile platform plays is really hard. Just ask HP, RIM, Nokia and Microsoft.
Even Google's Android, which made it look easy to grab dominant market share in the smartphone market, is finding it much harder to secure a footprint in the tablet market, where, let's face it, there's iPad ... and iPad.
Enter Amazon, whose forthcoming Kindle Tablet represents the clearest alternative to Apple's iPad.
Read the full post HERE.
UPDATE: Amazon announced the device today, calling it Amazon Kindle Fire, pricing it at $199, and announcing a hybrid client-cloud browser called Silk as part of the composite offering. One core takeaway from assessing Apple's and Amazon's differing approaches to finding a "wedge" in the tablet/media device market is that unlike so many companies, both get market segmentation, and how it works. Namely, that It's NOT about selling attributes (as RIM, Samsung & webOS have discovered); it's about delivering targeted outcomes.
UPDATE 2: Amazon is getting flambeed in the press for what many consider a poorly conceived, poorly executed device. On some level, this is unsurprising, inasmuch as all of the rumors were that the device was delivered by the same ODM that built the RIM PlayBook (using comparable components). All heuristics seemed to suggest that this device was the stopgap to make Christmas, and that the next device will be the real deal. On the one hand, you have Amazon's assertions that the device is breaking records (whatever that means), and analysts modeling sales in the mid single-digit millions. On the other hand, you have some truly bad PR that could damage the Kindle brand, and Amazon's cred in this realm. I think they'll weather the storm, and that this is the messy pragmatism of Bezos at work - ship the idea, fix, iterate. Still, I wouldn't want to be owning the 1.0 Kindle Fire if I couldn't cope with tossing the device when the next one comes out.
Related:
- Apple's Segmentation Strategy (and the Folly of Conventional Wisdom)
- Five quickie thoughts on Amazon's tablet computer announcement
- Head-to-Head for Ten Years: Wal-Mart, Amazon, Google and Apple
