Amazon to release tablet in September or October - danger for Apple?

Rumors are out that Amazon is going to introduce a color tablet based on Android In fall this year. Will it be successful?




(Image copied from Wired.com)

Apple introduced their tablet (iPad first generation) April 2010. Since then many tablets have come on the market with more or less no success.

According to a market research, Apple's iPad accounted for 89 percent of worldwide tablet traffic on the Internet in May, easily besting Android-based tablets and other slates.

Apple has sold 25 million iPads since the tablet's launch in spring 2010. Moreover, iPad held 87 percent market share in 2010, according to research firm IDC. Another research firm, Gartner, said it believes the iPad will own 68.7 percent of the market in 2011. Android devices, on the other hand, will only have 19.9 percent share this year, the firm said.

Why did so far none of the competition pick up on Apple? In my opinion there are many reasons, but mostly because the OS is too limited (like the playboook from RIM, which can only do mail with a Blackberry) or because the hardware is not as light as good and has shorter battery life (like Galaxy and Zoom). Plus none of the tablets are cheaper than the iPad. Another important factor is the amount of applications and the quality of applications. There are already 5,000 apps for Android tablets but the quality of many apps is not good because google does not control the applications.

The consumers are ready for another tablet which can compete with the iPad, not because the iPad is bad or the price is too high, but because we don't like to have only one real choice.

Amazon has a great chance to be the second winner in the tablet market. Which is an irony because Amazon is not a leading hardware company. But Amazon has something nobody besides Apple has. Amazon has a good app store and does control all submitted apps. It has less restrictions than Apple but more than Google.
And Amazon is like Apple a retailer and does know how service and support works which Google is just not good in.

Amazon is the biggest online retailer and has a big customer base, therefor they can and will market their apps in their store better than Google. As a amazon app developer i get frequently emails from Amazon with tips and helps to support me or to market my app.



There are a lot of complains from developers that Google does not support them . The latest example is Lodsys patent infringement claim. Apple is taking the fight but Google leaves it to the developers.

Amazon will and can do it better than Google, and can build a fast thin tablet with long battery life. Even if the kindle is not a tablet, Amazon still learned in the last few years a lot about tablet devices and integrated services.

Amazon has not only the retail experience but as well music service, video and ebook experience. A tablet could combine hardware with all these services.

If anybody can really compete with Apple on the Android market then it is Amazon. Pretty sure in 2013 we will have 50 or 80 different tablets but only two will share 70% of the market. All others will have together 30%. One of the two is Apple and the second one could be Amazon.

Microsoft can still catch up but yet we need to see a windows tablet or some success with windows phones. Microsoft missed the idea that the OS is not the most important part, it is the services around the OS. Windows got only so big because there was more services and apps available then for Apple computers.

Same happens right now with Apple iOS, regardless if the iOS is great or not, there are so many apps and services available that it would not make much sense for the user to buy something which would limit them.

But as I wrote, we never just like one choice, and I believe Amazon could win big against all other tablet manufactures.

Now here comes a thesis which is maybe totally crazy. Amazon will grow to the biggest Android market place that in 4 years most of the people won't remember who originally did develop Android.
Or do you remember which Linux was the first and who Linus Tovald is?

Stay tuned and keep your eyes open for a new Amazon device.

- Posted using BlogPress, please follow me on twitter @schlotz69

Location:Anacortes, Skagit, Washington

The tablet market is heating up

In February 2010 Apple announced their iPad which a lot of critics called then just a bigger iPod touch which nobody needs. Apple did define a new type of computer, slimmer than netbooks and faster and more colorful than ebooks, but less speed, memory and size than notebooks.

Who in the world does need another device? Apple proofed we needed a new device between smart phone and notebook. In April the iPad got shipped and after only 2 months they sold over 3 Million.

Six months after the first iPad got shipped the market has changed. The iPad was just the beginning. Many manufactures did follow.
First the German company Neofonie announced their WePad with memo a Linux based tablet computer which just got released as WeTab starting at $499.



Then Samsung released their Galaxy Tab in the UK with a two years carrier contract which will translate into $1000 running android.



Shortly after Dell announced a 7inch slate as the big brother of the 5inch Dell streak phone. Both are running on android.


Today we did read about the Blackberry playbook a 7inch tablet with two cameras for business customers starting at $499.




HP announced at the CES their slate which is a 9.7inch touchscreen computer with either windows 7mobile, Palm Os or both, price around $500. But not released yet





And there might be many more coming as I posted a few weeks ago.

But really interesting is that none of them are cheaper than the iPad, but have two things the iPad does not.
Flash and cameras (at least one camera). They are all either more heavy or smaller than iPad but interesting not cheaper even if everybody said the iPad is too expensive.

Rumors are around that Apple is already producing the second iPad generation as a 7inch version and with camera. Which is not typical for Apple to come with a second version before a year ends.

Back to the start of this blog, do we really don't need a bigger iPod touch? Maybe not, but interesting that all big players are following Apple. Most of them had netbooks before, but now they are moving to slates and starting to discontinue the netbooks.

Steve Jobs might had his downtime when he was fired from Apple in 1985 (The Man Who Fired Steve Jobs From Apple, John Sculley, Is Now Getting Fired By His Wife). And struggled 10 years with Pixar and Next till he came back to Apple. But since his comeback it seems that he can create any products he wants and we buy them and the rest of the manufactures try to follow him.
Note:
Next was not a total failure, iOs is using objective C, which was the base for nextstep the Next OS. Pixar needed long till it made money with Toys story. But a lot of UI inventions of Mac OsX are products which were originated by Pixar developers in the early years. Steve was not a software guy, he loved hardware but Pixar helped him to get a feeling for Art in software (Source "the second coming of Steve Jobs").

2011 will be hot with slates, and as a friend of mine says: "if it is released, it is already old, go to the next thing". He is so right, all the companies who are right now copying Apple to bring faster and better products to compare with iPad, are so busy with this that they will be late with the next big thing because Apple will have it already.

It is time that somebody steps out and does their own thing, the only way to be ahead of Apple, at least right now.

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Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Spring Hill,United States