Amazon has yet to announce specifics on its 7-inch tablet which some hope would compete with the iPad, but early leaked details suggest the “Kindle Fire” may be all wet.
The tablet, set to be officially unveiled at 10am Wednesday, offers neither a camera nor 3G connectivity, according to an early Bloomberg report. The $199 device is described as a “souped-up version of the Kindle electronic-book reader” running a version of the Android software.
More details to follow.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
36 responses to “Leaked Specs Show Amazon Tablet No iPad Competition”
Tablets compete on price and content, not on specs.
The Amazon tablet was always aimed at a different market than the iPad. Â I don’t see how it can be considered as any kind of a fail when their original intention was only to make a colour eReader in the first place. Â
This is really more about the death of eInk as a medium than it is tablet wars. Â
Indeed and Amazon are the only people with a content library to compete with iTunes
Following the keynote on CNET. Whispersync? Free Amazon Cloud Storage? Sounds like somebody from Amazon was paying attention at Apple’s WWDC.
People need to stop comparing the Kindle to the iPad. The two serve completely different functions. I really don’t understand the comparisons. The Kindle is a book. Its purpose is to read books. The iPad does all types of sh*t at a much higher price point for people who want a computer. The Kindle is a book reader. It’s like comparing Costco, which happens to sell books, to the local bookstore. The two are unrelated, although users might cross paths every now and then. Amazon is wise to not market the Kindle as iPad competition because it’s a different product. I wish people would stop characterizing the two as somehow competing. They are not.
Glorified Playbook with Apple-like content. No innovation to speak of; nothing we haven’t already seen.
Kindle Fire is an Android tablet. Do some research as this is as much of a competitor as the Playbook; TouchPad; etc.
This is some hard hitting investigative journalism! Almost like that time the local news channel investigated sausages. Sausages. Yum!
I just saw the liveblog – and the Amazon Kindle Fire looks like an excellent device for content consumption. Â It’s not for content creation. Â I think every person that is an avid reader will want one.
It’s not the tablet… it’s the services Amazon is offering that is competing with Apple.
It’s not the tablet… it’s the services Amazon is offering that is competing with Apple.
Well, Amazon is still banking on eInk, too, with two new eInk readers. A large proportion of book readers LOVE eInk and HATE color LCD, because eInk looks and reads like paper, and can be read under any condition that a book can. Not so for the color LCD fire, which, BTW, looks to be a me-too to the Nook Color.
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This very much a competitor to the iPad. Both are gadgets that allow the user to consume content. For now the iPad does more, but Amazon has the content and is laying the ground work.Â
Good for them. Apple is my prime source for content and consumption devices but I do purchase content from Amazon and having a option for a consumption device makes me happy  :)
Yesterday your rant would have been 100% correct.
Today your rant is 100% out of date.
I think the color Kindle is more in competition with the nook if anything. Certainly not the iPad. I mean, only a fool would think that the Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad. I know and work with lots of iPad users and none of them picked up their device as a book reader.
Amazon’s own feature list resembles that of a full tablet, not a book reader at all:
Stunning Color Touchscreen
Magazines in Rich Color
100,000 Movies and TV Shows
Fast, Dual-Core Processor
Your Favorite Apps and Games
Ultra-fast web browsing
Millions of Books
Free Cloud Storage
Your Favorite Children’s Books
Easy to hold in one hand
17 Million Songs
Extra Durable Display
Email
Amazon Whispersync
Free Month of Amazon Prime
Read Your Documents
That feature list is not all that different from an iPad feature list, and there are features in there that are dramatically different from previous Kindles, which were first and foremost e-book readers. The Kindle Fire is clearly a highly functional tablet that happens to have a Kindle reader app.
The Kindle Fire is basically a Xoom wi-fi without a mic and camera. The Xoom certainly is meant to compete with iPad.
That’s funny! You know, since Amazon runs Apple’s iCloud.
And Amazon has been doing cloud storage and services for more than five years now.
Well, at the lower price point, I guess a whole lot of fools are going to buy this thinking it’s an iPad.