Jeff Bezos is a strategist comparable to Steve Jobs. Throughout this 17 years business, Bezos and Steve Jobs both have strikingly similar foresight and adventurous spirit: They two like very much "unrestrained gambling" in non-relevant areas, trying to change the world. If Joe changed the PC , animation, music and mobile phone industry and created a "post-PC" era , then Jeff Bezos is changing the retail and publishing industry and defines e-commerce and opens a "cloud era." When Jobs is praised by all of world again and again for the magnificent iPhone 4/4S, iPad/iPad 2, iMac etc., Bezos seems to have been forgotten in the corner, secretly projecting a plan that will change the table market.
Amazon is going to release its own tablet called Kindle Fire and attracts widespread concern, not just because Amazon, who's not a true manufacturer, starts to march towards the tablet computer market, and most importantly, this 199$ Kindle Fire increased competition. There are really too many so called "iPad killer" failed gloomily we see in the past two years. I forecast that the 199$ Kindle Fire will going to be one of the best sellers!
Why other tablets are not so popular as iPad.
To catch up (or even exceed) the hardware level of iPad is not that much difficult. However, which now is better than iPad who integrates softwares and hardwares, and not to mention the user experience, public praise, cost control, brand recognition, marketing ability, to name but a few. Those "Androids" like Moto Xoom, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Tab fall into the fight of parameters, advertising, however they all cost almost 500 bucks. Why not these who afford that much money go and purchase iPad instead? Apple's market share rose to 68.3% from the 65.7% ( 80% + U.S. ), while Android tablets fell to 26.8% as a whole, according to the latest date from IDC.
This simply proves that: To follow Apple blindly only leads to failure. And the only way out is to do that iPad cannot do. The more a tablet is unlike iPad, the more chances you get. There are only two kinds of potential users: those who cannot afford iPad, and who has no demand of iPad. Kindle Fire strategy must be: low-cost and difference. In fact , Kindle Fire never want to be an "iPad killer "! Amazon tries to avaid the word "Android" in all of its promotional materials and even the word ""tablet" does not appear! 199 $ Kindle Fire is a smaller, lighter and cheaper "reading " device : only 7 inches, no 3G, no GPS, no camera , no Mic, but there is USB .... You get it?
I am not iPad, I'm not Android, I am even not Tablet! I am Kindle! I do what iPad cannot!
What iPad cannot achieve is what I-am-not-an-apple-fan wants! Apple is always denounced by: not open, not user-friendly and troublesome... Apple fans assume that iPad is convenient and fast and personalized. However, others do not think in the same way: I want USB, Apple do not provide us; if you want to transfer an image via Bluetooth, OK, break it first. Well, we are not going to discuss much about this, but we need to acknowledge the reasonable demands from those who are not Apple fans. Actually what Amazon does is Market Segmentation. Amazon achieves what iPad cannot. In addition, Kindle Fire has carried on the massive re-development based on Android 2.x, including foundation services of the browser. You could not find any Google element in it. And its system should be called Amazon OS! What we could forecast is this OS is totally different from iOS and it is open and will make these I-am-not-an-apple-fans more convenient!
You may ridicule hardware of Kindle fire, but do not forget its price is 60% cheaper than iPad! To purchase a $499 iPad also needs a reason, and is also not a bargain-priced goods which everyone is able to afford. What if we compare Kindle Fire with iPod Touch? Kindle Fire equals the selling price of iPod Touch (8GB), but the hardware of Kindle Fire comprehensively wins. Amazon's intention is obvious: Bring users a product that is different from iPod and iPad, and attract other potential users!
Let's see how Jeff Bezos explains Amazon:
In recent years, Amazon develops the digital service vigorously, and also Amazon Basics, Amazon Fresh, Amazon Studios... Dazzling, isn't? Wanna know more about Amazon? Take a look at this:
Why it is the best time to release Kindle Fire now?
Different from Apple, Amazon's core strategy is Numerous Users + Abundant Contents + Meager Profits. In the long run, the number of users and frequency of repeat purchase grow concurrently by the geometric series, even if each transaction is the meager profit (even part loses money), the total profit is also very huge. The data indicated that there are 137,000,000 users in American Amazon and return customers contribute most of the sales amount. A faithful customer's lifetime value is much more than the cost of goods sold. Strategic importance of the growth of users is bigger than the short-term profit.
The best defense is offense. If Amazon is able to attract users from Apple, he wins. Amazon is not aiming at making money, it aims at attracting more users! It was reported that the $199 Kindle Fire each loses out $50! In addition, to strengthen competitiveness, Amazon invested 1.3 billion USD in infrastructure (the cloud) and copyright content last quarter of the year. This is because Amazon owns the second highest ARPU (Average Revenue Per User): One user 189 USD and this is only an average value. Kindle Fire users will go and purchase more digital products from Amazon and actual profit from one user is actually more than 50 USD.
About Cloud Tech
Amazon's cloud technology is the best among the entire industry, who began the commercial use of cloud computing as early as 2006, leading Apple an entire 5 years! Actually Apple fans would know that the famous Cydia is from Amazon Cloud technology!
Before Steve Jobs developed iCloud, he tried to purchase Dropbox, however was rejected for some reason. You know Dropbox? AWS (Amazon Web Services) is referred to the Amazon Cloud Services: EC2, CloudFront, RDS, S3 and CloudFormation. They covered cloud computing, content delivery, database, storage, deployment, management... Let's see AWS-driven companies: Dropbox, Adobe , Twitter, NASDAQ, NASA ...
So, Amazon is the only competitor in seamless integration, operating system and user experience with Apple. With "Amazon OS + vast resources from Cloud", what Amazon is doing can be summarized as: I own what others do not own while I own a lower price if we all own something.
Now people will ask: iPad or Kindle Fire instead of iPad or not?
