Is it the toughened Gorilla-Glass screen? Nope.
Is it the dual-core processor? Nope.
Is it the “cloud-accelerated” Amazon Silk browser? Nope.
Is it the 8-hour battery life? Certainly not.
Is it the unified email inbox? Getting warmer.
Is it the connection of Amazon’s amazing content library containing 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books? Bingo!
As expected, Amazon introduced its tablet today. It’s called the Kindle Fire. It has a 7-inch color LCD and an 8-hour battery life. Rumors from www.androidcentral.com and other Web sites suggest that the “dual-core processor” mentioned in the Amazon press release is embedded in a TI OMAP SoC although Amazon isn’t saying officially. In fact, the company isn’t even claiming Android compatibility although that tidbit is included in several of the online descriptions written independently.
For 99.9% of the prospective Kindle Fire customers out there, the hardware and OS aren’t really the attraction, are they? It’s the immense wealth of content immediately available from Amazon that makes this offering unique. Amazon claims 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books are immediately available for purchase and viewing on the Kindle Fire.
- 100,000 movies and TV shows
- 17,000,000 songs in MP3 format
- 1,000,000 Kindle books
- 100 “exclusive” graphic novels including the cult classic Watchmen
- “Hundreds” of magazines and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Wired, Elle, and The New Yorker.
Amazon clearly understands what a tablet’s primary use model is. It’s an intuitive media consumption device that far outperforms a PC for this purpose. The Kindle Fire will allow Amazon to drive purchases of all the above media formats by getting the tablet into as many hands as possible. Hence the relatively low price of $199.
Make no mistake. The Kindle Fire is very much an EDA360 device from its dual-core SoC (whatever it is) to the use of the Android OS to the exceptionally high media component. The same tablet from any other vendor, lacking the instant attachment to a fire hose of content, would not be nearly as interesting. Just take a moment and listen to the Internet buzz. It’s deafening.
Be sure to see “Friday video (early): Secrets of the Kindle Fire! EDA360 in action”
Also, see Joe Hupcey’s excellent analysis of how EDA and EDA360 figure into the world of the Amazon Kindle Fire in his blog “Amazon’s New Kindles: More Steps Toward the Paperback Computer.”
