It has been suggested that Amazon should consider releasing a smartphone version of the Kindle Fire.
The belief is that a Kindle Fire phone would stand the best chance to compete directly with Apple’s iPhone, based on the tablet’s affordability, recognizable brand name and unlimited publicity through its connection to the Amazon retail store.
“Most important, Amazon has already done a lot of the heavy lifting required to build a phone,” writes Harry McCracken in a related Time article. “It could simply repurpose much of the effort it’s poured into the Kindle Fire tablet, and then add phone-specific features.”
“But this is all just hypothesis at this point,” comments TG Daily. “Amazon will be plenty busy with the Kindle Fire for some time to come.”
Yet it remains an interesting idea. “I wondered why no company has taken up the challenge of building…well, the iPhone of Android phones,” writes McCracken. “Something that’s elegant, approachable, uncluttered, and respectful of the consumer’s intelligence. Any bundled services would need to be beautifully integrated rather than just shoveled onto the phone indiscriminately, as the apps on Android handsets often are.”
HTML5 is quickly becoming the standard online programming technology, with support from the likes of Amazon, Rovio Entertainment, Pandora, Zynga and various online publications. The trend has also been fueled by browser support from competitors Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla.
Last week, Adobe announced it would stop development of the rival Flash format for mobile devices.
“HTML5 is a major step forward,” says Netscape creator Marc Andreessen. “HTML5 is going to put power back in the hands of creative people,” adds Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee.
“Some 34 percent of the 100 most popular websites used HTML5 in the quarter ended in September, according to binvisions.com, a blog that tracks Web technologies,” reports The Wall Street Journal. “Resume searches by hiring managers looking for HTML5 expertise more than doubled between the first quarter and the third quarter.”
“If you want to be delivering a Web experience around multiple devices, you have to be doing it in HTML5,” explains Danny Winokur, Adobe’s general manager for interactive development.
The technology is also being used for media-rich ads and games for social network apps. The article suggests this is only the beginning.
In a quiet acquisition deal, Amazon is purchasing Yap, a speech-to-text startup that may find its voice recognition technology in future Kindle products.
“Yap is truly a leader in freeform speech recognition and driving innovation in the mobile user experience,” says Paul Grim of SunBridge Partners, which funded Yap in 2008.
“Yap’s technology may give Amazon the ability to add voice controls to its tablets capable of understanding far more than the rudimentary commands currently supported by Android software, potentially allowing the company to erode Apple’s dominance,” reports Forbes.
Apple has yet to make a move toward installing Siri on its iPad, so Amazon could get a jump start. “If Amazon puts Yap’s technology to good use and releases tablets with intuitive voice recognition in the near future, it may give Android-powered tablets a stronger handhold in the market,” suggests the article.
An increasing number of consumers are switching to digital content for movies, music and books. The approach has benefits, including convenience and cost, but may also be leading to a loss of rights and abilities we’re accustomed to as consumers.
Fortune writer J.P. Mangalindan expressed concerns that systems such as Amazon’s new lending library would change the meaning of ownership since users would be relinquishing actual ownership of content in favor of a rental model.
The ability to stream digital content online has led to the same kind of transformation. Services such as Spotify and Netflix have allowed users the freedom of streaming content anywhere, and have made subscribing to such a model affordable and convenient.
GigaOM raises an interesting concern: “Apart from our simple human need to own and collect physical objects, however, there’s also the way that renting changes our legal relationship to the content we are consuming. Amazon has shown the downsides of this in the past by actually deleting copies of e-books from people’s Kindles remotely after a complaint by the rightsholder — and those were copies that people had actually bought, not rented.”
If we move closer to a streaming, rental-style model for all content then perhaps consumers would eventually prefer a short-term license to use content over actually owning it. But what if Netflix or Amazon decide to change their terms of service? “What if companies decide you no longer have the right to watch certain TV shows or read certain books?”
In his compelling O’Reilly Radar post, digital media entrepreneur Mark Sigal offers his take on the post-PC wave and its major players.
Post-PC is the fourth computing wave that follows mainframes, PCs, and the Web.
Sigal suggests that Post-PC devices, which Morgan Stanley expects to number 10 billion by 2020, are becoming the most personal, mobile, social and human-centric tools that marry hardware, software and services.
For example, Sigal cites John Gruber of Daring Fireball, regarding Apple’s Siri voice-based system: “Siri is indicative of an AI-focused ambition that Apple hasn’t shown since before Steve Jobs returned to the company. Prior to Siri, iOS struck me being designed to make it easy for us to do things. Siri is designed to do things for us.”
Apple, Amazon and Google are the companies that best represent emerging trends in this space.
A recent study by EyeTrackshop showed that Apple’s iPhone 4S and iPad 2 “drew more glances and held people’s attention longer than Google Android devices from Amazon, HTC, Motorola and Samsung,” reports Forbes.
The study showed participants a picture of six smartphones and five tablets. EyeTrackshop’s software tracked where subjects’ eyes went, in what order and how long, using webcams.
“EyeTrackshop said the results equate to respondents dwelling on the iPhone 4S 42 percent longer than the other phones and on the iPad 138 percent longer than the other tablets.”
Additionally, a follow-up survey indicated that 40 percent found the iPhone most visually appealing; for tablets, 35 percent for the iPad; and disregarding price, 47 percent said they would buy the iPhone and 48 percent preferred the iPad to other tablets.
Hollywood studios are starting to use Facebook as a direct-to-consumer platform for streaming films, possibly cutting out services such as Hulu, Netflix and Amazon in the process.
Universal, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. have distributed some 45 films via the Social Cinema app from Milyoni (pronounced million-eye). “What Zynga is to social gaming, Milyoni is to social entertainment,” reads the company’s website.
Miramax and Paramount have used similar apps to offer movies for Facebook credits on fan pages.
Rentals based on credits are running the equivalent of $3-$5. Facebook draws a 30 percent cut of transaction revenues.
Ad Age Digital suggests the studios’ willingness to offer rentals via social network sites “may reflect their desire to foster competition among online distribution platforms,” adding, “Miramax CEO Mike Lang said that digital monopolies were a greater threat to the film industry than piracy and that his studio had been aware of the importance of a competitive marketplace when doing deals with Netflix and Hulu.”
There was a time when Apple was a consumer electronics company, Google was a search engine, Amazon was an online retailer and Facebook a place to connect with friends. Now each of these companies is growing into the space of the others as they compete for new and expanding markets in mobile, social and cloud services.
Amazon’s upcoming Kindle Fire tablet will compete directly with Apple’s iPad. Google+ has taken on Facebook. Android and iOS are direct competitors. And Facebook has been considering its own mobile phone while it also looks to offer content, advertising and retail services.
Fast Company analyzes the “future of the innovation economy” in this regard, with a particular emphasis on the inevitable war and its major players.
“Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google will not last forever,” the article suggests. “But despite this oncoming war, in which attacking one another becomes standard operating practice, their inevitable slide into irrelevancy likely won’t be at the hands of one of their fellow rivals. As always, the real future of tech belongs to some smart-ass kid in a Palo Alto garage.”
Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak is predicting record sales of the Kindle and Kindle Fire. However, the company also anticipates a lag in revenue after initial sales of the devices, as consumers get acquainted with their machines before purchasing content for them.
“Much of the profit from these products would come from digital purchases by consumers post-sale,” reports The Next Web.
“Once a customer has purchased a device, what else do they buy? We certainly have some data now that we didn’t have prior to the launch [of the ad-based Kindles]. Once the customer purchases the Kindle and are carrying around this massive selection at their fingertips, they buy more content,” said Szkutak.
In a related Geek.com post, it was noted that the Kindle Fire may become the best-selling Android tablet ever, as pre-orders continue to flood in.
Amazon is producing “millions more” tablets to match the demand that has overwhelmed the company since announcing the slate a month ago.
The Fire will sell for $199, possibly making it an attractive alternative to Apple’s iPad, which starts at $499.
Amazon announced it has expanded its trade-in program to include the Kindle and other e-readers.
A used Kindle is reportedly worth $25 to $135, and the customer will receive an Amazon gift card in exchange.
To help encourage trade-ins, the company is also offering free shipping.
“With the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire on the horizon, I wouldn’t be surprised to see many e-reader owners take advantage of this program,” suggests TechCrunch. “Simply visit Amazon’s Trade-In page and enter in the name of your model.”
Looking for the flexibility and power of HTML5, Amazon has announced its new e-book format, Kindle Format 8 (KF8).
The new format will help take advantage of the richer features expected with its upcoming Android-powered, full-color Kindle Fire.
“HTML5 features such as CSS3 formatting, nested tables, SVG graphics, embedded fonts, and borders are all now supported,” reports Ars Technica. “The new format includes much richer layout options, including fixed layouts — essential for accurate reproduction of many children’s books — and panel-based layouts for comic books. Books can include sidebars and callouts, text overlaid on background images, boxes, drop caps, and more.”
KindleGen 2, the new KF8 publishing tool, is expected to be available soon.
Recent speculation has suggested that Apple will produce an “iPad mini” to compete with the $199 price tag of the Amazon Kindle Fire, but many analysts doubt the possibility.
For one, if Apple is looking to compete with the Kindle Fire — which it has already denounced as a threat — it would have to compete in price, not size. A recent study showed that two-thirds of consumers want 10-inch devices while only 9 percent want a 7-inch tablet.
“We expect Apple to maintain its premium price point on tablets,” wrote Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. “Apple will not allow Amazon to dictate the terms of competition — Apple makes its own rules.”
Additionally, the new size would complicate the development of apps, which have been specifically designed for the 3.5-inch and 9.7-inch displays of current Apple devices.
And the final reason: “Steve Jobs emphatically stated that 7-inch tablets are too small for a pleasant touchscreen experience,” writes Wired.
Google is expected to roll out its own music store in the next few weeks.
It will reportedly tie into the company’s Music Beta service that allows users to upload and store their music collections.
Music Beta was announced after launch of Amazon’s unlicensed service, Cloud Drive. Also worth noting: “Apple got licenses for iTunes Match, which will instantly link a user’s songs to Apple’s master collection.”
“Its earlier negotiations with music companies, for a so-called smart locker service — a Web storage system that lets people link their digital music collections to a vast central database — broke down over financial terms and the music companies’ complaints that Google was not doing enough to curb piracy,” reports The New York Times.
In order for Amazon to stay competitive in the cloud computing market, its S3 (Simple Storage Service) and EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) could take some notes from Apple’s iCloud (launching October 12).
Seamless integration “provides iCloud with huge scale advantages over Amazon,” suggests Forbes, by wirelessly storing content from iPhones, iPads, the iPod touch, Macs or PCs and automatically pushing content to all devices.
“Consumer-centricity” makes cloud-computing user-friendly with targeted features like iTunes Match. “This feature prevents the need to painstakingly upload music into the cloud as iTunes Match itself creates a library matching the user’s existing playlist.”
And pricing. “While the iCloud provides free 5GB-worth of storage for documents, mail, and back-up for iOS 5 users, Amazon’s S3 service charges users for even the first gigabyte of storage space.”
The article points that little is yet known about Amazon’s other competitor, Google’s GDrive.
With its Kindle Fire, Amazon hopes to distinguish its Appstore from Google’s Android, even though the tablet’s OS is based on the 2.x version of Android.
“It seems that Amazon really wants to make sure that the Fire is a more curated and cohesive experience than most Android tablets,” suggests The Next Web, as is evident in the guidelines for submitting Kindle Fire applications. However, the post points out: “They’re not locking everything down though, as installation of ‘non-Appstore’ apps will be permitted without rooting.”
Interestingly, Amazon’s Appstore doesn’t support in-app purchasing. “Because Google’s in-app purchasing technology requires access to Google Mobile Services,” says Amazon, “it will not work on Kindle Fire. We are working on a solution that will let you sell digital content in your apps using Amazon’s merchandising and payments technology. Our solution is currently in Beta and available by invitation only.”
