Amazon Doesn’t Want To Be More Like Apple, It Wants To Be More Like Amazon.com

New Kindles

With the introduction of the $499 8.9-inch Kindle HD with LTE, Amazon now has a device with the same price tag as the new iPad. Of course, the devices are very different when it comes to capacity, connectivity and screen size but the consumers will have no choice but to compare them.

Yet, contrarily to what many have said, Amazon is not trying to be yet another Apple wannabe. The Kindle announcements were not a message for Apple. In reality, Amazon has found its own way in the hardware business by staying true to its identity. And it is doing it at full speed.

There are 203 job openings on its website for its fabled Lab126 R&D center. They’re serious about hardware, but on their own terms.

Cheap prices without important usage numbers are useless

Amazon’s strategy has been clear for a few years. Ever since the prices of the Kindle e-readers started to go down until hitting the sweet $99 spot, it was clear that Amazon was selling and subsidizing hardware devices in order to sell content.

At first it was just e-books, now it is movies and MP3s as well, through the Amazon Prime subscription or with a more traditional per-item purchase. In order to drive prices down, Amazon started selling all of its devices with ads — euphemistically called special offers — on the lock screen.

Now all devices from the $69 entry-level Kindle to the $499 Kindle HD are bundled with ads. Users slowly but surely accepted those lock screen wallpapers. Amazon has to be careful not to annoy users too much even if it means lower prices.

Indeed, Amazon has to foster a great experience because it is what matters to the company. If Kindle Fire buyers stop using their devices a month after acquiring them, then it means that the company has lost its bet.

That is the reason why Amazon is hiring a lot of people on its hardware projects. The company needs good hardware in order to attract customers, and, even more important, to keep them in the Amazon ecosystem. The worse scenario is when Kindle Fire buyers find that a Nexus tablet would be much better for their needs and start abandoning their devices.

Building good devices now is important so that the vendor lock-in effect can kick in for the years to come. But Amazon’s lock-in is very different from Apple’s or Google’s.

Amazon builds excitement by hinting at new stuff, not by being secretive

Apple is known for being very secretive about its plans for new products. Even Apple employees don’t know what the other teams are working on and security measures are implemented to drastically protect access to buildings on Apple campus.

But Amazon is not taking the same approach. Even though Amazon employees tend to spoil the fun by sending too much information to tech blogs, Amazon has adopted a very novel strategy in the days prior to the Kindle Fire HD unveiling. For example, they got all the tech press’ attention by stating that the original Kindle Fire was sold out on August 30. They made sure that everyone knew that new models were coming up — it was purely a communication move as devices can’t sell out, except if the company stops production.

Another interesting move is the Amazon ad that featured the new Kindle devices the day before the press conference. People talk about a new iPhone or iPad months before their announcements. Amazon cannot expect the same kind of anticipation and excitement.

Instead of adopting the same strategy as Apple without the same results, they found their own way and it has worked well. The coverage of the new Kindle devices was much more important than the coverage of Motorola’s or Nokia’s press conference — even in mainstream media outlets.

DNA difference: Amazon has a unique approach to hardware and content

One of the major difference in style from other companies comes from Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos. At the press conference, he delivered a solid presentation that showcased what makes Amazon so different from other companies. He is both a charismatic and focused leader, proud of his company’s products when he unveiled them to the public. If Bezos’ original idea with Amazon was to sell all the books in the world through the Internet, he clearly believes in its Kindle devices as well.

Successful tech companies have a strong identity that separates them from the others — from Facebook’s hacker culture to Apple at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. “One thing I should tell you is that our approach is our approach, and we don’t even claim it’s the right approach,” Bezos said to AllThingsD.

Amazon is first and foremost a retail company and it understands that well by, for example, bundling movie streaming with two-day delivery in Amazon Prime or putting Kindle ads everywhere on Amazon.com so that it is only a click away if you want to add it to your cart.

But something odd happened. Amazon became one of the most technology-focused company due to its infrastructure needs to power the tenth most popular website in the world. With Amazon Web Services, the company started providing to other websites one of the most powerful and most used platforms. Instagram, Netflix, Foursquare, Pinterest, Heroku and countless other services rely on the platform.

Being the go-to platform is one of the inspirations behind Amazon’s content strategy. Instead of thinking about putting stores together to please their users like Google does, Amazon is trying to build a coherent content platform with many ways to consume content — subscriptions, rentals, Kindle Singles, Kindle Serials, etc. — and believes in that goal. They have the resources to be present on every front, contrarily to Netflix.

People won’t buy Amazon devices because they like the operating system or the hardware. They will buy an Amazon device because they find it so much easier to watch movies or read books using Amazon’s content platform. It comes with a few conditions: the hardware needs to be on par with other manufacturers, Amazon should keep hardware prices low without bothering the user too much with ads and the company should stay focused on making the best content platform in the world. That is why Amazon’s DNA is unique and totally different from every other tablet or e-reader manufacturers — especially Apple.


Amazon Announces First Kindle Fire Tablets Outside Of The U.S., Starting At £129 In UK, €159 In France

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Along with Amazon’s big tablet announcements earlier today, it’s finally also unveiled the first markets to get the Kindle Fire tablets — both the new Kindle Fire and the HD version — outside of the U.S. The news first trickled out in a forum announcement on Amazon.co.uk, which also announced availability of the new Kindle e-reader.

This is announcement is more significant than Amazon finally answering questions of when it would launch these tablets internationally. It’s a sign that it is getting ready to turn the taps on full and really start getting some global scale to their device operation. The Kindle readers have already been a big hit in markets where they have launched, and so launching the tablets, at competitive price points, will be Amazon’s first crack at truly upsetting the global balance for the tablet market, which has basically been dominated by Apple and the iPad, with very little headway from any single Android-based tablet vendor. Until, possibly, now.

“Last year there were more than two dozen Android tablets launched into the marketplace, and nobody bought them,” CEO Jeff Bezos boasted earlier today in the presentation in Santa Monica.

The Kindle Fire — the new version with a faster processor and 16GB of memory — will sell for £129 ($200; in other words at a premium to the price in the U.S. — as a commenter points out below this includes 20% VAT sales tax and probably some leeway for currency fluctuations).

The HD model is the seven-inch version, so the smaller of the two unveiled today. The 16GB version will sell for £159 (another premium price of $253); the 32GB will sell for £199.

The new Kindle e-reader will sell for £69 ($109).

All are on pre-order.

Although a lot of people have been wondering when Amazon would finally get around to launching the Fire tablets outside the U.S., the first comment from a user, fairly enough, was: “Nothing about the Paper White [sic] then.”

The news comes after several weeks in which Amazon has gradually filled in details about its retail operation and other services in the UK. It will be partnering with Waterstones to sell the devices. The company already had Kindle retail partnerships with other companies, including the huge supermarket chain Tesco, which may also carry the Fire, although that has not yet been confirmed.

It also turned on the Appstore in recent days in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Given that Amazon’s Android apps marketplace is also now live in other European countries, it’s likely that the Kindle Fire tablets will also be going live in those markets soon — if not already.

Update: A reader points out that the same selection is also now live in France, with the seven-inch new Kindle Fire model going for €159. Germany has the same pricing model, as does Spain and Italy.

Update 2: We asked an Amazon spokesperson about the Paperwhite Kindle: “Unfortunately, I’ll have to ask you to stay tuned on that,” is her response. So we may be seeing an appearance of that product at some point; still, no outright “no plans” response, nor a timeline.

Full announcement below.

Introducing the All-New Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, plus the All-New Kindle e-reader

Kindle Fire – the Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games, and web browsing, and the #1 bestselling product on http://Amazon.com for the past year-is now available in the UK with a faster processor and twice the memory of the original Kindle Fire, at a breakthrough price of only £129.

Kindle Fire HD – all-new with a stunning custom HD display – offers the fastest Wi-Fi, exclusive Dolby audio with two stereo speakers, and a high performance processor and graphics engine for the most immersive HD experience available on a lightweight, portable 7″ tablet – all backed by Amazon.co.uk’s vast content ecosystem, the best cross-platform interoperability and the best customer service – for £159.

Select from Amazon’s vast collection of digital content with over 22 million movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, and magazines.

We’ve also introduced a new version of the world’s best-selling e-reader – the all-new Kindle -still incredibly small and lightweight, but now with faster page turns, new fonts and parental controls -and at an even lower price point of only £69.

Enjoy!
The Kindle Team


Kindle Pre-Orders Now Live For Fire, Fire HD and Paperwhite

Kindle Paperwhite

The all-new Amazon Kindles are all now available for pre-ordering from Amazon’s website. The Kindle Paperwhite retails for $119, or $179 for a version with built-in, free 3G connectivity, and those versions ship on Oct. 1. The Kindle Fire HD models come in both 7- and 8.9-inch flavors, and retail for $199 and $299 respectively for 16GB versions of those, or $249 and $369 for 32GB versions while a $499 LTE version with 32GB of storage is also available. The 7-inch HD device ships on Sept. 14, and the 8.9-inch models both ship on Nov. 20.

The basic Kindle also got some improvements and a price drop, and can be ordered for $69, and the original Kindle Fire also got updated and knocked down to just $159. Note: these appear to be for U.S. residents only for now.


Hands-On With The 7″ Kindle Fire HD: Excellent Display, Super Snappy, But New WiFi Is A Question Mark

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Amazon just announced the Kindle Fire HD, and we heard all kinds of magical promises: a beautiful display, super duper fast WiFi, and a host of new features. On almost every count, Amazon delivered, and at a wonderful price point.

After getting up close and personal with the 7-inch Fire HD, the first thing you notice is the display. Yes, the rumors are true. It’s gorgeous. In fact, it’s on par with a Retina display iPad. All images (whether they’re within magazines, in video, on the web, or whatever) look crisp and clear. Zoom, and zoom again. You still won’t find a noticeable level of pixelation.

We also played around with a few new features, like FreeTime, and took a look at the revamped email, Facebook and Skype apps. Facebook is usually a truly terrible experience on mobile, but with better WiFi and the improved processor, the app seems to move relatively quickly. Though, logging in and firing up the app to begin with were a bit painful.

As far as responsiveness goes, the Fire HD is incredibly snappy. Scrolling through the carousel, pinching to zoom on a webpage, and flipping pages inside a magazine is a joyous experience. The words “instant gratification” come to mind, which is a bit of a contrast to most tablets (yes, even the iPad).

Unfortunately, the promise of supernaturally fast WiFi didn’t quite come to fruition. To be fair, there are about a billion reporters here clogging up the WiFi network, but loading the TechCrunch webpage and opening Facebook took a hot second. A cold second? It took longer than I expected.

The new system uses dual-band WiFi and has two different antennae, just in case your hand happens to block one. It also uses MIMO technology, which uses the echoes (caused by objects in the world) as opportunities to listen better, and thread together the original message.

I’m not saying that the new WiFi is slow by any means — I’m simply saying that it’s not as great as Bezos made it out to be. Of course, if you buy one, you won’t be enjoying the HD Fire on a crowded WiFi network, and so results may obviously vary.

The 8.9-inch model isn’t available for our playing pleasure right now, but the 7-inch model feels great in the hand. It’s got a soft-touch rubber-ish back panel that is comfortable and offers a solid grip, though it does soak up prints a bit. The corners are a bit more rounded than they were on the original Fire and it is noticeably thinner and lighter. The backside tapers to get ever-thinner toward the edge of the device, which offers a better handle on the 7-inch tablet. It’s a much smoother backside than the sharper first-gen Fire.

The dual-stereo speakers not only sound great, but add a nice design flare to the Fire HD. They lie on each side of the device, with a plastic strip running along the backside of the tab. Kindle is branded across the plastic.

All in all, I’m highly impressed. Aside from the semi-slow WiFi (which may be forgiven once I’m on my own network come review time), this is just about everything you could ask for from a tablet, and for an incredible price.

Click to view slideshow.


Amazon Introduces 8.9-inch, 32GB, LTE Kindle Fire HD for $499

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Amazon introduced one last Kindle Fire today, the HD version with LTE capability and 32GB of storage for $499. That’s a much better deal than the competition is offering, at least in terms of straight hardware comparisons. People can pre-order that device today, and it ships Nov. 20th.

It also comes with a $49.99/year data plan that provides 250 MB of traffic, 20 GB of cloud storage and a $10 Amazon Appstore credit. It’s a really good value, and CEO Jeff Bezos noted that it runs $410 less than a comparable iPad with data.

This is a significant addition to the line up, and maybe the biggest announcement today, in terms of what effect it might have on the tablet market. So far, critics have said that Amazon’s efforts with tablets are no threat to Apple’s dominance, since they aren’t really competing in the same price ranges. Now that’s changed.

To recap, the other specs of the Fire HD include a 1920×1200 screen with 254ppi, less glare thanks to a laminated touch sensor, Dolby Digital Plus sound from two stereo speakers, two antennas to create more dependable Wi-Fi performance, and all the rest that’s included in the other Fire HDs in the lineup.


New Kindle Fire Software: Multiple Profiles, New Email, Custom Facebook And Skype Apps

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Amazon in its ongoing press conference has hinted at some improvements to the Kindle Fire software. It seems to be a completely new interface with great improvements to existing apps — or, in some cases, totally new apps. Over the past few days, developers have spotted that the Kindle Fire OS is now based on Android 4.0 instead of 2.2. It remains to be confirmed but the important changes seem to indicate that.

Among the new features, Amazon has a completely new email client with Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo support out of the box, a custom Facebook app in which, for example, you can share your book highlights and a custom Skype app to take advantage of the HD camera on the new devices.

The previous Facebook app was just a link to the mobile website. Other notable features include the addition of multiple profiles to get a custom experience depending on the person using the device, whispersync for games and audio books so you don’t lose your progress between devices and more.

X-Ray for movies is another important addition. It uses Amazon-owned IMDb to get information about actors in a specific scene of a movie. It is now available for textbooks as well. Kindle Free Time is a new feature that allows you to set time limits for each app. For example, you could allow your kid to read books while restricting access to other apps to one hour a day.

In portrait mode, the Kindle Fire displays recommendations at the bottom of the screen for apps or content to buy.

The Kindle Fire was known for its unresponsive operating system. The demos on stage showed a much more responsive operating system than previous versions. The home carousel was very snappy. Amazon gave us an example of a special offer, which would hint at lower-priced ad-subsidized models.

The Kindle Fire OS is still deeply integrated with Amazon’s ecosystem and content cloud. You can stream music from Amazon Cloud Player, download your Kindle books or stream movies if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber. For example, if you buy a song, it is backed up on Amazon’s servers.

Amazon has yet to say if the new features will be only for the new Kindle Fire HD or for all the devices. It will probably be available for the new Kindle Fire. But existing Kindle Fire owners might not get the update as Amazon usually doesn’t add new features to previous-generation devices. It was the case for E Ink Kindles.

Click to view slideshow.


Say Hello To Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Family: $159 Upgraded Original, $199 7-inch and $299 8.9-inch HD

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Amazon just introduced new Kindle Fire tablets, including a revamped old version that costs $159, and is both faster and has longer battery life, as well as two Kindle Fire HD models, one with an 8.9 inch display and one with a 7-inch display at a higher price point, but with Dolby Digital sound and high density displays.

The HD models have a TI OMAP 4470 processor, as well as improved Wi-Fi performance thanks to two antennas to cut down on signal interference. The resolution on the large HD Fire is 1920×1200, and there’s a laminated touch sensor on the screen to reduce glare and produce sharper, better contrast. The Wi-Fi on the Fire HD is supposed to be 41 percent faster than the iPad’s according to Amazone CEO Jeff Bezos, thanks to the new antena design.

An HD front-facing camera answers one of the larger complaints that’s been made regarding the first Kindle Fire, and should come in handy when using the new custom-built Skype application. Both HD variants also offer HDMI out and Bluetooth connectivity.

The Fire (SD, some are calling it) has double the RAM of the original, as well as a faster processor and longer battery life, and will retail for $159, which is quite a bit under the cost of its closest competitors.

The 7-inch Fire HD will cost $199 with 16GB of storage, and ships on Sept. 14. The 8.9-inch device with 16GB of onboard storage retails for $299, and ships Nov. 20.

Update: Both the 7-inch and 8.9-inch Fire HD also come in a 32GB version, for $249 and $369 respectively.

Kindle Fire HD Gallery






Old Kindle Gets A New Name (And A New Price): The $69 Kindle With Better Page Turns, More Fonts

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At Amazon’s press conference today in Santa Monica, the company is unveiling new devices, but to help sales along through the range, it’s also dropping the price of at least one of the old ones.

The older, $79 Kindle is getting discounted by $10 and picking up a new name and a few other extras in honor of the occasion. It is now called “The $69 Kindle.”

This makes it the cheapest device yet in the Kindle range of e-readers and tablets.

Shipping from September 14, it will feature improved page turns and more fonts.

The announcement was made as CEO Jeff Bezos introduced a line of new devices. No word on how the current stock has sold yet, although some wider proclamations made on the current state of the market:

“Last year there were more than two dozen Android tablets launched into the marketplace, and nobody bought them,” said Bezos today.

The company has been notoriously quiet about giving hard numbers for how the Kindle has sold. In December last year, it revealed that it was selling all Kindles, including the Fire tablet, at a rate of over 1 million per week.

More to come.


Amazon Officially Announces The New Kindle Paperwhite: “Paperwhite” Display, Frontlighting, 8 Week Battery, And 212 PPI

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There’s plenty to talk about here at Amazon’s Los Angeles press conference. The Kindle Fire 2 is obviously a hot topic of discussion, but lest you forget the product that started it all: The Kindle. As expected, new models of the E-Ink ereader have been officially announced, and one (the Kindle Paperwhite) follows in the steps of Barnes & Noble’s Nook with Glow.

The new Kindle Paperwhite features frontlighting for the very first time, allowing readers to enjoy their Twilight fan fiction in the dark, perhaps sleeping next to their partner without disturbing them. It will also come with a “Paperwhite” display, which offers more contrast and brightness.

The location of the USB port and power switch haven’t changed much from previous generations of the device, but the design language has. There is no longer a home button at the bottom, and the casing has gone from light to dark grey — nearly black.

The display has 62 percent more pixels, and it’s super sharp with excellent contrast. It’s 9.1mm thin, with a very thin bezel, and you can adjust the level (25 in total) of the display with your finger. A new feature called “Time to Read” offers a glimpse at how long it’ll take you to get to the next chapter. Biographies are available for characters in books from the Amazon store, as well as author info, bios and lists of works. The Paperwhite also boasts 8-week battery life, even with the light on.

The basic Kindle Paperwhite is $119, can be ordered today on Amazon.com and ships Oct. 1. The $179 model includes 3G for free free, and it’s available in over 100 countries worldwide.


Live From Amazon’s 2012 Event: Fire It Up!

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From outside a massive hangar in Los Angeles, California, grown men and women — members of the press — just literally ran into the venue for Amazon’s special 2012 press event.

A next-generation Fire is expected, along with updated Kindle ereaders and a whole lot of content deals.

We even caught wind of a new serialized fiction deal just last night, so expect to hear quite a bit.

We’re told this is going to be a long press conference, but fear not. I’ll be right here with you from beginning to finish.

Fire it up!