{"id":4731,"date":"2011-09-28T10:06:36","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T15:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=4731"},"modified":"2011-10-06T10:25:42","modified_gmt":"2011-10-06T15:25:42","slug":"will-amazon-kill-the-ipad-with-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/hardware\/tablet\/will-amazon-kill-the-ipad-with-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Amazon Kill The iPad With Fire?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

A good kind of burn<\/p><\/div>\n

The long-awaited Amazon Tablet is here, and it was outed by Bloomberg<\/a> a good five minutes before the actual event started. At just 7″, the Android-based dual core tablet lacks cameras and 3G connectivity (there’s Wi-fi though).<\/p>\n

The Fire resembles RIM’s Playbook (there’s allegedly a reason<\/a> for that) and is a smart looking piece of hardware. I’m waiting on firmer spec details and a chance to go hands-on, but for the meantime my first thought is that this is absolutely not an iPad killer. The 7″ tablet market segment has been showing itself to be a completely different animal than the 10″ market, with people willing to”settle” more with the 7″ models. The Fire does, however, have a good chance of kicking Samsung’s Tab line to the curb and killing Toshiba’s new 7″ Thrive<\/a> in the crib.\u00a0 Why do we say that?<\/p>\n

Amazon has a major advantage over non-Apple tablet makers in that they already have widely popular content models available for TV, movies, magazines, books, and music. There’s no waiting for third parties to grant rights or hoping Hulu doesn’t block the tablet here. Boot up, and odds are pretty good that the entertainment medium you desire is ready to go.<\/p>\n

Then there are apps. Amazon’s Android App store, complete with free app of the day, is already one of the first things an Android user adds, so it’s not like you “lose out” by not having direct access to the Google Market.<\/p>\n

Amazon’s “Whispersync” tech is in place with the tablet, meaning you can watch\/read on one platform and then move to another (smartTV to tablet to computer etc) without losing your place. It’s an impressive feature that you simply couldn’t have without the existing ecosystem, and Amazon’s long-time embracing of the cloud — something Apple is still getting around to utilizing to the fullest. Heck, Amazon even plans to use their cloud know-how to speed up the browser. They call it “Silk”, but it’s basically a proxy server, optimizing what comes down.<\/p>\n

The main sell here, though, is price. At just $199, the Fire is the best priced, major label tablet in it’s class. The TouchPad showed how quickly an unwanted tablet with an uncertain future can sell when the price was right. Considering that people have been willing to pay $250 for the privilege of voiding the\u00a0 warranty on their Nook Color by\u00a0 modding into an actual tablet, I think that $199 for a supported tablet that works out of the box is actually a better deal all-around. There’s no word on if you’ll be able to get past Amazon’s heavy customizations (before the modders get to it anyway), but the average user isn’t going to care.<\/p>\n

As a side note, Amazon also introduced three new readers — a $79 Kindle, a $99 Kindle Touch, and a $150 Kindle Touch 3G. All good deals for someone who just wants an e-reader, or in the case of the 3G, a dedicated Wikipedia device too. That’s a good variety of\u00a0 prices and devices. Although, I can’t help but think “For $50 more I could get a tablet.”<\/p>\n

Which I suspect is exactly what Amazon wants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The long-awaited Amazon Tablet is here, and it was outed by Bloomberg a good five minutes before the actual event started. At just 7″, the Android-based dual core tablet lacks cameras and 3G connectivity (there’s Wi-fi though). The Fire resembles RIM’s Playbook (there’s allegedly a reason for that) and is a smart looking piece of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,46,12,47,40],"tags":[244,1398,1402,472,1399,1401,199,1400],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4901,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions\/4901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}