Amazon Hits Apple with New 'Three Kindles for the Price of an iPad' Commercial

[tigress666]

Yeah, and I could buy like 3 Kia Rios for the price of a single Range Rover. That totally makes the Kia Rio a superior car, right you guys?

As a car nut, you picked a bad example. I'll easily take the 3 Kias for the price of the car that is known to have lots of reliability issues. My mom had a Land Rover, piece of crap. New and constantly had to be at the dealer for service.

Try picking an actual good car for the money, not an overpriced POS. Like a Mercedes or even a Toyota LandCruiser.

 

[Rayd5365]

Great ad! If you're only gonna read books and watch video, well, that's a great way to go.
Love my iPad, love my Kindle.

 

[Revearti]

Bad commercial. I can't wait to carry around more than one device when there is one device that will perform far better than all three combined.

Kindle only has one advantage which is reading in sunlight. They lost that feature with the Kindle Fire.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

Kindle e-Ink is still the killer app. Readability is directly proportional to ambient light. With the iPad, it's inversely proportional. It's also easier on the eyes in any environment. And the devices are absurdly inexpensive.

Kindle Fire is not nearly as crappy after the last software update.

 

[Boatboy24]

Great campaign - at least until a lower priced iPad 2 is announced.

 

[caprica13]

iPad is pretty much useless outside with even just a little bit of sun. For every other condition it's the top dog.

Any e-Book reader (I have the new Sony PRST1) is perfectly suited for reading outside with any amount of sun, except for darkness.

I don't see why people can't use/have both if they can afford them. They're really matching quite nicely.

Kindle Fire is useless with sunlight and mediocre (at best) in other conditions. Not worth it IMHO.

 

[Samskeyti]

Three Kindles put together still can't perform like an iPad. You could buy 100Kindles, and combined they still couldn't perform like an iPad. So what's the point?

Quality over quantity. Always.

 

[Ryth]

Three Kindles put together still can't perform like an iPad. You could buy 100Kindles, and combined they still couldn't perform like an iPad. So what's the point?

Exactly.

Hey guys look, I got 2 pencils and a black pen.

Um...ok...that still doesn't equate to my super duper marker which has 256 colors and all pencil and pen weights.

 

[mannyotr]

So instead of always carrying around just one single device, I now have to carry three. Seems logical.

 

[ABernardoJr]

Pretty effective commercial honestly. I know how much better the iPad is on... well, on everything, but to the average consumer...

I think many people underestimate the recognition and awareness of the average consumer. Many people don't look and see "oh, this is cheaper than an iPad, it must be better", not even average consumers. People that might think that are likely to be less involved in tech stuff and may just want to get a tablet of some sort, but that's arguably not even the "average" consumer anymore.

------

With that said I think the Fire is a good product, it's affordable and does a lot of things the iPad can, albeit not as effectively in my opinion, but it's smaller and thusly more portable, etc. It's good but I don't get the idea of pitching it as the product that costs a third of an iPad. Of course it's going to cost less, even though people were shocked at how affordable the iPad was in the first place. I don't get why all of a sudden people think that the iPad could be overpriced when it undercuts most of its (direct) competition. It hardly puts things into perspective because the iPad didn't suddenly increase in price after the Fire was released.

 

[linux2mac]

Three Kindles put together still can't perform like an iPad. You could buy 100Kindles, and combined they still couldn't perform like an iPad. So what's the point?

Nicely summed up. Exactly what I was thinking as do the millions of people that are willing to spend more money on the "supposedly overpriced" iPad. It just goes to show that people are willing to spend more money on quality products like Apple.

 

[*LTD*]

So . . . 3 Kindles = 1 iPad?

Sounds about right.

 

[rdowns]

 

[vrDrew]

And you can buy twenty packs of Marlboros for the price of a single ounce of decent-quality pot. But good luck having a very good time smoking them all.

Not to encourage, or even endorse, illicit drug use (or tobacco smoking), but thats kinda the point: If you need a product to perform a task only it can do the price of inferior substitutes is pretty much irrelevant if they simply can't do it.

Which in the case of the various Kindles is this: They can't run any of the tens of thousands of high-quality Apps that an iPad can. No Garageband; no Flipboard; no RealRacing HD; etc. etc. So its fine (well, barely tolerable) for mundane tasks like web browsing, movie viewing, or book reading. But any - and all - of those tasks are more enjoyable when you've got four times the screen real estate to work with.

You can certainly make an argument for getting a Kindle in addition to an iPad: Reading on the subway or at the beach. But making the argument that the Kindle Fire is substitute for the iPad, with all that the iOS platform offers, is really stretching reality.

 

[yodaforum]

They forgot to ask the kids to come out of the shade to show the Kindle Fire off...or are they trying to mislead general consumers that Fire is good in daylight at watching movies? I suppose it is a clever advert if people believe this ad.

 

[iMikeT]

Yeah it's cheap but do you really need three cheap devices in the place of one good device?

 

[jontech]

That's ok, the iPad can't perform like a single Kindle at e-Reading. Different devices, different functions, for different people.

Bought my son a Kindle Touch for Christmas. Its awful for anything other then bright light reading. The touch controls are horrible and Its looks like I'm reading an 80's calculator screen with black and gray

But its better for reading right? I mean better then being able to change the background colors, fonts, color highlighting and a lit screen to read in bed without a light.

 

[Mike Oxard]

It actually works out more expensive, as after owning them for a few weeks, you'll then want to sell two of them and buy an iPad instead, keeping just the $79 one for reading books on.

 

[akm3]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Very smart marketing. The mom reading in peace while her kids are entertained is priceless. This is a strong angle to play for parents.

For singles not as powerful. You get all the power in one box.

Amazon is basically saying two fires and a kindle equals one iPad which is probably pretty close to the truth.

 

[Hastings101]

Three Kindles put together still can't perform like an iPad. You could buy 100Kindles, and combined they still couldn't perform like an iPad. So what's the point?

The iPad is pushed around as almost a laptop replacement while the Kindle Fire is for consumers that don't need all the iPad offers because they just want to watch a movie or read an e-book on something that is larger than their smartphone but still as portable.

Kindle Fire doesn't need to perform like an iPad because it's not even trying to accomplish the same things as an iPad.

 

[tigress666]

Man, people love to make digs at Apple. So, I have to carry around three separate devices just in case I want to do something the iPad does? Oh, shewt, I could show you my portfolio, but I left my other tablet at home! Whatever helps them sell stuff I guess. Works for some, not for others. I know what my choice was.

I thought the point of the ad (to be fair I wasn't looking closely when I saw it on TV last night, I only saw the last part) was the person could afford to get a kindle for everyone in his family for the price that one guy had to pay for his iPad. Honestly, if you think about it, that's a very good tactic. Three kindles where people aren't fighting to use it, or one iPad where all the family is competing for time on it?

Also, I think the FIre would have been a great device if it had been lighter. I know the biggest reason I wouldn't consider one of the cheaper kindles is I do want some extra functionality in my ebook reader (I don't really need some full functional tablet, I have my 13" MBP for that) and the Fire totally would have addressed that. I even prefer the smaller size. But the thing is pretty dang heavy (Which is a huge turn off for me honestly. It's actually kinda a turn off reason for the ipad because 10" is too big to be a good ebook reader, I want something I can easily use with one hand, that's the biggest advantage I find to using my iphone as an ebook reader as compared to a paper book but I wouldn't mind having a bigger screen for book reading).

Honestly, if Amazon followed Apple's idealogy of making things light, the Fire would be awesome for me. Or, alternatively, if Apple ever gave in and made a 7" ipad, I'd consider buying it as an ebook reader with extra functionality (personally I prefer the latter since I already have an iphone and I use ibooks so they'd work together really nicely).

It's a great commercial that will appeal to many people. I am sure the commercial/specs/etc will all get slammed by many enthusiasts on here but that's pretty much a knee-jerk reaction for any company that isn't Apple. Nothing more. Nothing less..

I fully agree here. I think it's a very good ad and very well targeted (unlike that Samsung Note ad that totally does not do a good job of illustrating why it's better than the iphone and yet brings up the iPhone. If you are going to bring up your competitor's name, do a good job of showing why yours is better).

 

[kds786]

Personally, I think its not an effective commercial because why do you want to have to carry 3 different devices around for something all the time? I get that the "extra" Kindles would be for the kids but I don't think it's a good enough marketing strategy to really cause Apple any issues.

 

[SuprUsrStan]

Cute.

Quite a bit better than the Samsung campaign.

 

[G4DP]

As a car nut, you picked a bad example. I'll easily take the 3 Kias for the price of the car that is known to have lots of reliability issues. My mom had a Land Rover, piece of crap. New and constantly had to be at the dealer for service.

Try picking an actual good car for the money, not an overpriced POS. Like a Mercedes or even a Toyota LandCruiser.

You claim to be a car nut and think the Merc is value for money? haha.

 

[deannnnn]

I saw this commercial last night during Modern Family. It's an interesting attack, but I don't know if I like the whole "you need two Kindles to get the whole experience" kind of thing. You're going to buy one or the other, not both.