Is Jeff Bezos the new Steve Jobs?

The new Kindle Fire.  It's not a phone.  It's not a tablet.  What the hell is it?  It's a huge gamble.  If this was an HP product I'd snicker, but it's from Amazon, one of the two most innovative, forward thinking companies around.  The other is Apple, of course.  

For years we've read all about the genius of Steve Jobs and the products he's shepherded out of Apple, products that have changed our culture: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.  The question is, what will become of Apple now that Steve Jobs is gone?

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994, and has toiled in the shadow of Steve Jobs, but his success has been pretty impressive as well.  Amazon.com pretty much leads the way in online retailing.  While Jobs concentrates on the design and simplicity of his products, Bezos concentrates on efficiency and a powerful website to make Amazon successful. 

Back in 2007, Bezos took a big gamble by introducing the Kindle ebook reader.  It wasn't the first ebook reader, but what made the Kindle different was what was behind it, a wireless phone link to Amazon's online store of inexpensive digital books that could be ordered and dowloaded in just seconds.  You could also subscribe to digital copies of newspapers which would delivered to the Kindle each morning before the hard copies could be delivered. 

The Kindle was greeted with much skepticism, but Bezos had done his homework and the Kindles sold well from the start.  Book lovers quickly noted that the Kindle could hold hundreds of books in a very portable device.  It could be read on the subway or bus, or pulled from the pocket if you were in line for tickets or waiting for a performance or lecture to begin. 

That was in 2007.  Now the market has powerful color Nooks, smart phones with ebook reader apps, and Apple's iPad, all with the convenience of touch screen menus and color screens (but all also have LCD screens which are harder on the eyes for long reading sessions than the e-ink screen that the Kindle uses, plus they drain batteries much faster).  We all knew Amazon wouldn't concede the field to these upstarts, so we've been anticipating a new Kindle for months - but what would it look like?  What would it do better than the competition?

Most of us expected a new super Kindle that would (try to) blow away the Nook and have the functionality of an iPad, but no one was expecting FOUR new Kindles!  Amazon just introduced a cheap, no-frills Kindle for $99 ($79 if you are willing to let the Kindle display ads and special offers when you put it to sleep), a touch screen with wi-fi for $139 ($99 with ads), and the same model with the addition of 3G cellphone downloads for $189 ($149 with ads).  All three have the same 6" b&w e-ink screen that the current Kindle has, but are smaller and more portable (just 6.5" x 4.5" for the no-frills model!) because they don't have a keyboard.

The big news is the fourth new model, the Kindle Fire, with a 7" color screen (same technology as the iPad), and the Android operating system with an Amazon Silk browser (Silk is described as "a revolutionary, cloud-accelerated browser that uses a "split browser" architecture to leverage the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services cloud. Supports Adobe® Flash® Player.").  So in many ways it's like a Kindle mated with a smart phone, but without the phone (and camera).

I've had a Kindle since they first came out and I recently purchased my first smart phone, a Samsung Infuse with a 4.5" screen (I make or receive about 5 phone calls a week and could live without the camera), so I can easily imagine what the Kindle Fire is like.  When I first heard the announcement this morning I was bewildered by the Kindle Fire, but now I realize Amazon is not putting all their eggs in one new basket.  The 6" e-ink black and white screen is excellent for reading most books, and Amazon now has three reasonably priced models that should make them affordable for teens and twenty-somethings who are just starting their careers (if they're lucky).  Kindle books can now be borrowed from libraries. 

The Kindle Fire shows that Amazon knows they are not going to win going head to head with Apple by coming out with a tablet like the iPad.  The iPad is designed as a productivity tool and priced accordingly.  Businesses are buying them for their employees.  The Kindle is designed for entertainment and information.  The iPad is small but not what I would call portable.  The Fire is 7.5" by 4.7" and weighs less than 15 ounces (The iPad 2 is 9.5"x 7.3" and weighs 1.3 lbs).  For reference, my phone has a 4.5" screen and I'm amazed at how clear streaming video is and how legible my Kindle books are on it.  I'm pretty sure that a 7" screen will be fine for 99% of the uses the average owner will buy it for.  Oh yeah, and did I mention the Fire's $200 price?  How much does the cheapest iPad cost?

I haven't read any revues of the new Kindles or articles about Amazon's strategy, but just 8 hours after the initial announcement, my first impression is that Amazon has hit at least a triple with their overall strategy for keeping up with the fast changing market for readers/tablets.  My only concern is that smart phones are ubiquitous and offer many of the same features as the Fire.  Will people with smart phones shell out $200 more for the Fire?  I wonder.  It looks like Amazon is planning to market this as something the family shares, emphasizing the children's books and videos that can be downloaded or borrowed from the library to keep the kids entertained while someone cooks dinner.

--Trakker

Comments

[horsec]

FWIW, not much, a friend has both iPad and Kindle

She prefers the iPad.

How many other manufacturer and suppliers are going to jump into this market? How feature rich, and at how low a price?

How long will it be before they are giving these things away with a fill-up at a gas station as they once did with pocket calculators?

[Trakker]

Amazon is at an advantage here because they know they can sell the device for less than it costs to make and rely on selling content to make a profit. But obviously Amazon knows it can't compete with the iPad. No one can right now. So they did the next best thing and produced a cheaper, more portable Android tablet, with cloud storage for the masses, plus some very cheap, well designed ebook readers that a large segment of the population can afford even if they don't read much.

I think the $79 Kindle will sell very well, especially to teens. There are a whole slew of young authors who are cranking out fantasy novels directed at teens for $2, and some are well written - certainly worth $2.

Actually, Amazon might even make money giving their readers away at some point!

[horsec]

Amazon might even make money giving their readers away at some point!

I'll take anything that's free. I have 2 CueCat® scanners. Never used either one.

[Trakker]

Ah, the detritus of progress. Too useless to keep, but too unique to throw away.

[horsec]

Ah, the detritus of progress. Too useless to keep, but too unique to throw away.

There's a name for this junque, "collectable!"

I have an original IBM PC, of which a late friend said, "That will be worth something some day, if anyone remembers what it is." He bought one of the original IBM PCs with tape cassette storage for $3.3k+/- because he, being an engineer and roboticist, had a use for it. From him I received a brand new IBM PC motherboard. I don't know why he had it. I thought about putting it in a picture frame and hanging it on the wall. "Look, a computer so big you can see it!"

I don't have his IBM PC. Mine came from another friend who, having received it as a gift from one of his neighbors called me, "Do you want this POS?"

[Trakker]

I have some interesting relics of my grandfather's from his duty in Europe in WW I. Last summer I decided to sell them on eBay, figuring they would be quite valuable by now.

NOT! Every single item I planned to sell was already on eBay, often in better condition and at bargain basement prices. Junk is junk!

[horsec]

Junk is junk!

As a banker friend said of real estate (he owned a few condo rental units), "If it's priced right, it will sell."

It is possible to have a friend in banking; don't ask to borrow money from his bank.

After the eBay market clears for Grandpa's "junk," you'll have the market cornered.

Most people don't factor in the cost of storing collectable junk until the space in the basement or attic runs out. At which time there's incurred the cost of throwing things away:
1) the cost of executive time it takes to decide What to throw away,
2) the Dumpster,
3) the doctor treated back sprain,
4) taking the wife on vacation afterward,
5) living with the regret of having thrown away a collectable just before it became valuable, etc..

[Trakker]

1) the cost of executive time it takes to decide What to throw away,

I have always had trouble throwing things away, probably influenced by 2 grandmothers who insisted the grandkids open their gifts carefully so the gift wrap could be used again, and again, and again. It's even harder for me to throw away something obviously well-made that I know there may only be a limited number left in existence.

[horsec]

gift wrap could be used again

A habit the rich never had, that the poor can't lose.

There's something about being poor, and having no other recourse to the wealth (embodied in pretty wrapping paper), than to save everything that might be useful at a later date. This is how the poor come to hate themselves for being poor. The evidence piles up in every nook and cranny.

[Trakker]

The evidence piles up in every nook and cranny.

Sadly, true. Look no farther than my basement!