Amazon’s Secret Plan
While Barnes and Noble are trying to look like the iPad, Amazon seems to be determined to go as far as to provide the same things the Apple’s gadget is offering to its users. In fact, there are lots of indications that something is going on at Amazon’s labs. Its Kindle gadget takes about 60 % of the e-reader market and no wonder is the first to suffer from the iPad breathtaking sales. But the company seems to have its own way of dealing with the problem.
First of all Amazon is quite close to launching its own online app store for Android applications. It will be another Android store similar to the Android Market but having a huge difference – some kind of approval procedure like that of Apple’s. According to some rumors and leaks provided by TechCrunch and a range of other topical sites, the guiding policy of the new online store will be no great difference from that of Apple’s App Store – a good monetization policy, restrictions applied by Amazon only and so on. In general, it was clear that creating an on-line app store was a profitable idea both for mobile developers who will get their 70 % of every app sold and users who will have more quality apps available. Also there is some evidence that Amazon is working on some hardware at the moment which runs the Android OS. If we sum it up, the idea of delivering a tablet is not that wild guess. And to tell the truth, Amazon has all the background to launch a gadget.
First of all, due to its Amazon MP3 and Video-On-Demand services, the company can quite easily distribute music and video. Those channels can compete with Apple’s iTunes. If we are talking about books, 1 million e-books to choose from are much more than Apple can offer to its users. So, what’s really needed is a good hardware which would provide all these abilities and a good marketing campaign which would stimulate Android developers and interest future customers.
To be quite unbiased, the mentioned gadget must be a success considering the situation at the tablet market when users have to choose either from law cost and quality Android tablets which will have no access to the Android app environment or quite costly Samsung Galaxy which many analysts already call dead on arrival, or keep to good old iPad. Amazon tablet can really produce some agitation at the market. Unfortunately, it will hardly be unveiled till Honeycomb – a full-fledged OS environment for tablets – is released. So, the tablet is more likely to be developed somewhere next summer and come to the market next autumn. No doubt, it will be looked forward to with great anticipation.
- first almost nobody
- the gadget and long line
- he reality turned out
- with some disbelief while
- Apple released the iPad
- consumer electronics market
- something even worth mentioning
- is surprised at hearing