Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
Amazon with a major event on June 18th, indications that the Kindle Fire Smartphone is on it’s way. The question I have is not about the announcement, but the availability of the handset to consumers in the US, the UK, and then the rest of the world.
Bing, not Google, to be the search engine for the Kindle Fire tablets. Given Amazon is giving Google an end run on everything (ad revenue, primary sign-in on device, OS branding, app store, etc) it’s only natural they’d turn to another search engine. Still, nice bit of negotiation all round. Give it six months, and that will probably make Bing the #1 search engine on Android tablets. I’ll be watching Tim Cook very carefully on Wednesday to see which search engine any new iPads will be using…
Amazon’s Android offshoot, the Kindle Fire debuted in the US this week. Not surprisingly, the big-ticket items such as the 8.9 inch Kindle Fire HD, and the bundled version with 4G LTE support will stay inside US borders, but we are getting the ‘improved’ Kindle Fire and the 7″ Kindle Fire HD… By getting I mean everyone places their order now, and delivery will be made on October 25th, which gives Amazon enough lead time to build as many that are needed and not have to worry about a warehouse full of Kindles sitting around doing nothing. Amazon are clearly
Why else would you let your stock of Kindle Fires sell out, mere days before a big media event that smells like a product launch? Amazon, once more mastering supply and demand of hardware… and PR.
And there we go – a bit later than I expected, but Amazon Kindle Fires are being flashed with clean Android ROM’s, in this case of 4.0 and the Ice Cream Sandwich build. To be honest this was always going to happen, and I think the few hundred Fires that will be flashed won’t worry Amazon. Bezos will be happy with the extra PR and marketing going out there to help sell more catalogues Kindles for his digital store. It’s building mind share, and it gets over the idea that the Kindle Fire is the only true Android tablet in the
If you have 99.95% of the market, which was pretty much the case for the iPad at the start of the festive season, and one competitor comes in with some serious marketing spend and distribution capability (Amazon and the Kindle Fire Android tablet), then it’s only natural than your 99.95% market share is going to drop. The question that is of more interest is in the unit sales and the underlying trend of the iPad. I’ll put money that in the buying seasons, the iPad sales are hockey sticking.
