Amazon Media Event Set for September 28th, Tablet Announcement Expected

alent1234 said:
they don't lose money per device. they build them cheap enough to make a profit on them so they can keep selling books. without a kindle they would be locked out of the book market which is a core business for them
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They dont loose money on Kindles because its a black and white device with a cheap processor and doesnt do a whole lot. A tablet is a different beast. There have been multiple entrants into this market and nobody has beat apple on price let alone price and features. At $250 if this is a true tablet they will be losing money. Period.
 
Free Amazon Prime included?

Any recent word on the earlier rumor that Amazon's tablet might include a free subscription to Amazon Prime with access to Amazon's streaming collection of TV shows and movies?
 
Its not going to fail, but it isn't very likely to take off like the iPad, I mean after all Apple has considerable influence on the media and review sites.

However, considering Amazon is starting to establish their own eco-system I think its going to be the closest to competition up to this point.

As long as its moderately comparable to the iPad as far as power and its priced right (biggest factor is the price IMHO) then I think its going to be a rather successful device.
 
alent1234 said:
kindle is cheaper
it meets the steve jobs fetish test of thin and long battery
it does what it's built to do just right
a lot more free books in the kindle store than the apple store. along with cheaper prices
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Kindle looks cool. (I don't own one). But when I demo them in the stores it always "flickers" when going to the next page. That would drive me nuts. (Or is that not normal on a kindle?)

iOS pages swipe smoothly.
 
Friscohoya said:
They dont loose money on Kindles because its a black and white device with a cheap processor and doesnt do a whole lot. A tablet is a different beast. There have been multiple entrants into this market and nobody has beat apple on price let alone price and features. At $250 if this is a true tablet they will be losing money. Period.
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amazon doesn't need to make it with a dual core A9, GPU, etc. they need to make it fast enough to read books, play the crappy games that litter all the app stores and watch movies at a 720p resolution

people on this site should know that paper specs don't make a product a hit

i see A LOT of them every day. people buy them to read books. the new one will be just a cherry topping from the core feature of reading books you buy from amazon. i see more people reading books than playing games on the train to/from work
 
Well, I have a Kindle and I really enjoy it for reading, as well as its hidden killer feature, the "experimental" browser that lets you surf on 3G, anywhere, for free.

Obviously it's not a very great browser (no color, etc.) but it does the job and free is hard to argue with. I live in Canada, and whenever I visit the US (or any other country for that matter), I have to remember to turn my iPhone data OFF or risk facing HUGE data roaming charges. Now that I have the Kindle, I can access the web for basic things from the US and Europe, etc.

I owned an iPad, loved it to bits but simply didn't need to keep both an iPhone and an iPad. But some days I wish I had a 7" tablet to augment the iPhone. This might well fit the bill, we'll see...
 
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While apple has nothing to fear from this, I wonder what will happen to all those other failing android tablets if amazon releases something that costs less AND works well.

Keep in mind that Amazon's tablet will either steal market from existing android tablets or entire people who just hate apple. The iPad is so widespread, that everyone who is looking to buy a new tablet will look at the iPad first. Then, they will look elsewhere. The only people who would be interested in Amazon's tablet are those who hate apple or are switching from other android devices. And even then, statistics indicate that android users are 3 times as likely to change brands (i.e., not stick to android). I do not see it as a threat to apple's iPad, but I'm interested to see how this plays out.
 
Steve's Barber said:
Kindle looks cool. (I don't own one). But when I demo them in the stores it always "flickers" when going to the next page. That would drive me nuts. (Or is that not normal on a kindle?)

iOS pages swipe smoothly.
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That's just how e-ink works. Think of it like those Magna Doodle toys we used to play with as a kid, where you'd have a slate filled with suspended iron filings and a magnetic pen that would draw them to the surface as you doodled. To erase, you flicked a little plastic bar which forced all the filings back down below the screen. If you flick too fast I believe it was possible to miss a spot, so you had to flick it a few times to get everything cleared.

E-ink is the same way. The flicker is the system "erasing" the screen by forcing every pixel to black, then to white. Otherwise there might be a faded residual image. You can jailbreak a Kindle and install a hack which doesn't do the flicker, but there are tradeoffs.
 
If the coming device is any good, it could make things a good deal more interesting in the tablet world, and might even prompt Apple to cut its own prices (the company has previously stated that there is enough leeway built into the iPad's price that it can adjust it to be more competitive if needed). So this is a potential win for consumers.
 
product26 said:
how is this apple related?
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This is probably the only company/tablet that will give Apple a run for their money in the tablet market. I mean, look at what "competition" they've had so far...and I use that term very loosely.

Will certainly be interesting to see what Amazon comes up with. As it is, their Kindle app is my most used app on my iPad 2. I have a Kindle 3 also, but prefer the iPad for reading.

I was always hoping for a hybrid e-ink and touch-screen color LCD underneath it. I don't know, have some sort of technology to where you can read your e-ink books and have it "clear" away to use the LCD underneath when you want, then have it come back on top when you're ready to read a book again. I'm sure that's impossible as it is now, but it would be the best of both worlds.
 
arkitect said:
You obviously don't.

Many, me included, do.
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As Steve predicted, I foresee another DoA 7-inch tablet. The sheeple designing these just don't seem to get it.

@ a $250 price point the display is going to be an LCD. This will be a color nook for amazon. No, thank you.
 
notjustjay said:
Well, I have a Kindle and I really enjoy it for reading, as well as its hidden killer feature, the "experimental" browser that lets you surf on 3G, anywhere, for free.
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Might be illegally piggybacking on someone else's network, since Amazon does not have a 3G network. Possibly cool for consumers who want to save a buck, but unless Amazon is paying someone for this network access, very shady business indeed (I don't know how the Kindle gets this network access; does anyone else have any insight into this?).
 
Amazon understands the consumer and content far better than Google does, the Kindle tablet has the possibility not only to be the first real competitor to the iPad, but also to completely co-opt Android in the tablet market. iPad will retain the crown for multi-purpose tablets, Amazon will corner the cheap content-consumption market while Moto, Samsung, et. al., will be resigned to producing single digit market share niche products for the insignificant market that craves open.
 
MacinDoc said:
Might be illegally piggybacking on someone else's network, since Amazon does not have a 3G network. Possibly cool for consumers who want to save a buck, but unless Amazon is paying someone for this network access, very shady business indeed (I don't know how the Kindle gets this network access; does anyone else have any insight into this?).
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Shady?

Google it... they have a partnership with Sprint to provide 3G service.

OOOOOOOhhhh shady. Not biased are we?

I'll add that I think that if Amazon offers email service on this device that it could very well be strong competition for the iPad.

Not everyone wants/needs the iPad at 499 as an entry point. But there are plenty of people who would love to have one device for reading, media and email (who don't need all the bells and whistles) at $250 (if true).
 
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