Last week, the first Kindle Fire tablet computer from Amazon was officially unveiled. Almost immediately, the novelty was placed in first place among the bestsellers on Amazon – despite the fact that it will be available only on November 15, while it is available only by pre-order. What is so special about this tablet? Will it be able to compete with the iPad?
The Kindle Fire has an 11.4-millimeter case, a 7-inch display, and it runs on a modified version of the Android 2.1 operating system.
The tablet is quite light – only 143 grams, equipped with a touch IPS display with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels and Gorilla Glass protective glass. The screen supports multi-touch, and the device runs on a dual-core processor with a clock frequency of 1 GHz.
(demonstration of the new tablet, Eng.)
In addition, Amazon Kindle Fire supports 3G, has a Wi-Fi module, 3.5 mm jack, 8 GB of internal memory. The battery is enough for 8 hours of reading or 7.5 hours of watching videos. The battery is charged for 4 hours.
Of course, there is full integration with all Amazon services. The user is also given access to the Amazon Cloud virtual data storage. Another feature of the tablet is the new Amazon Silk browser, which processes user requests using the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) cloud service, allowing you to reduce the loading time of web pages, as well as save the resources of the device itself.
According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the Kindle Fire, powered by Android, is not just a device, but a ready-made service for the end user. “In the conditions of the modern consumer electronics market, a manufacturer that focuses only on the development of the hardware part of its product hardly has a chance of success,” said the CEO of Amazon. “The software that is implemented directly in the device or in the form of a cloud service is of the greatest interest today.”
So far, the only tablet manufacturer with fully implemented support for services is Apple. Every iPad tablet user has access to the App Store, can download music and videos from iTunes, as well as use books from the iBookstore library. With the advent of the updated version of iOS 5, iPad users will have access to the iCloud service, which is a virtual storage of music, photos and other information.
Android also provides access to cloud services, but a small number of applications is its weak point. Also, there is still no own music service. Manufacturers of Android-based tablets are forced to make up for the lack of services on their own. For example, last year Samsung launched the Media Hub video service to watch videos in streaming mode, at the beginning of this year a similar service became available to users of tablets and smartphones from HTC. But the efforts of individual manufacturers are clearly not enough to provide users with the necessary applications and content.
Interestingly, there was a rumor on the Internet that the sale of new tablets for Amazon is unprofitable. The iSuppli resource calculated the cost of Amazon Kindle Fire – it turned out to be $192, plus the cost of assembly and delivery to the customer – this is about $18 more. As a result, each Kindle Fire tablet computer costs Amazon almost $210, while its retail price is $199. According to analysts of the Reuters news agency, with reference to representatives of the developer company, Amazon had to apply such a pricing policy to ensure its device a successful start and no less successful promotion.
But will Amazon be able to promote its tablet so as to bypass Apple’s iPad? Many people liked the novelty, but J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz does not share the general enthusiasm. According to him, even an aggressive pricing policy will not allow Amazon to instantly turn into the second tablet manufacturer in the world. “We’re not thrilled with the Kindle Fire. In our opinion, this is at best a “launching pad” for entering the tablet market. We believe that in order to fight Apple, an impressive offer is simply necessary, which the Kindle Fire is not,” says Moskowitz.
But according to the Bloomberg portal, Amazon does not set a goal for the Kindle Fire at all to bypass Apple along with its iPad. These devices are of slightly different levels: if the iPad claims to be a kind of office tablet, then the Kindle Fire is more focused on people who consider tablets to be nothing more than entertainment devices. That is why the emphasis in Amazon Kindle Fire is on diverse content services.