Why I'm Interested in the Amazons Tablet
I’m interested in seeing how well the Fire sells because to me it seems a good test of which consumers value more; Content or technology.
The device itself is technically not stunning; It seems to be roughly equivalent to last years Galaxy Tab 7 with 8GB of storage and missing a few features (e.g. a camera). It’s also not running Honeycomb, so it doesn’t really have the geek-chic appeal of the more recent Android tablets.
What it does have is content… and buckets of it. And I think because of that it’ll be at least a reasonable success, and could possibly sell by the bucket load.
Amazon is initially going into the territory where Honeycomb tablets are at their strongest, the US, which is a brave move. Outside the US, where users don’t get the Google digital content store services like Books, Movies, and Music, I can see the Fire grabbing large amounts of market share (if Amazon makes the content available as well), and with the price point Amazon have gone for I can’t see a 7" iPad being considered a competitor by anyone other than bloggers who don’t understand the market or those whose main interest in life is their hit counter.
Will I get one?, well, if I can get video and TV programme rentals, then yes, but if it ships internationally as a 7" tablet which is just for books, then I’ll stick to the eInk kindles, which, I guess, puts me in the content valuing camp.