Here’s some followup to Amazon’s big announcement yesterday of its Kindle Fire
tablet and the new lower-priced Kindle e-ink e-readers
- Daring Fireball – Apple blogger John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball, likes the new Kindles.
In fact, my feelings and his match very closely: the new Kindle Fire isn’t a direct competitor to the iPad, it’s an alternative. - SplatF – Dan Frommer notes huge growth in e-book sales
Sales of books are up overall. Paper book sales are growing rapidly and e-book sales are growing even faster. - Apple Holic – Jonny Evans argues everyone else is dead
Writing over at Computerworld, Jonny Evans makes the point that it’s everyone else, not Apple that needs to be worried. He also notes, as many have, that although the Fire is based on Android underneath it all, it’s really an Amazon tablet, not an Android tablet. (Sort of in the way that Macs are UNIX computers underneath it all.) - Nieman Lab – It’s all about the shopping
The Nieman Lab has a solid point with its analysis that the Amazon Fire is all about providing a new way to consume products from Amazon. But I have to question the statement that the iPad 2 is “elite oriented” and has a “stratospheric” $500 starting price. Yes, iPad 2s do start at $500. But no one else is managing to sell a similarly equipped tablet for less. The “stratospheric” comment raises the question, “Compared to what?” Compared to a lightweight laptop? Compared to a carrier subsidized smartphone? Compared to a triple-shot cappuccino? The Fire and the iPad 2 are drastically different products and different price points. There is also the assumption that everyone’s looking for a way to avoid Apple’s 30 percent cut in what is sold through the App store. This is true. But the answer will likely be mobil optimized HTML 5 pages that will work on any tablet.
For the record, I pre-ordered one of the new Kindle Touch e-book readers