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Bezos, on Amazon's refreshed e-Ink readers: So meet the family. These are premium products at non-premium prices. People are going to love these products. Thi

Bezos, on Amazon's refreshed e-Ink readers: So meet the family. These are premium products at non-premium prices. People are going to love these products. This is Amazon's mission statement for product development. They will not compete with Apple's "revolutionary, magical" phones and tablets; instead, they'll sell quality tablets and readers to the average person at great prices. This populist attitude has been missing from the tablet market since the iPad's release. The Fire will be the first successful Android tablet because the user base already exists. With the last few Kindle generations, Amazon has groomed customers to pay for electronic content. These users will buy Kindle Fires and e-Ink Kindles in droves, buy more books, and tell their friends. At this price, Amazon won't steal Apple's customers. They will simply introduce a new segment of people to the tablet market. Developers need to think about this as another golden ticket. Here's the iOS gold rush, part deux. EDIT: changed "luxurious" to "revolutionary" after reading a comment below. I need more coffee.

jkincaid 15y ago
"With this price, though, Amazon won't steal Apple's customers.." I think a lot of people with iPads would have been more than happy to spend half as much to get an easy-to-use tablet.
- achompas 15y ago
  I hesitate to agree because it seems like the iPad and Fire will provide different experiences. For what it's worth, I couldn't justify an iPad for $500. I would absolutely consider a Fire for $200 (or a Fire 3G for $250-300).
  - LearnYouALisp 15y ago
    He or she is saying that some people who were not looking for the advanced features bought the iPad because it was the only tablet available beyond some minimum.
    - CWuestefeld 15y ago
      Awareness is also a big factor. My mom (she's a minister) just got an iPad, when all she needed was a handheld device with which she can scroll the text of a eulogy, when she's at a grave doing a funeral. The lowliest of tablets can handle this task, but "iPad" is all people talk about. If Amazon can generate buzz -- and I think they can -- then it would certainly erode sales such as my mom's.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- cormullion 15y ago
  A lot of price comparisons are based simply on initial purchase price. If you take into account pre- and post-sale service and support, build quality, longterm reliability, resale value over time, to name a few, it's harder to simply compare purchase prices. I think there will also be some people who will end up with Kindle Fires who probably - secretly - wanted iPads. Santa will be able to save a few dollars this year...
- Bud 15y ago
  Yeah, a lot of people think they know this market and what people "would" buy, and all of them except the guys selling iPads have been wrong so far. Batting average of everyone else: .000. "Easy-to-use", which is far from a given on a non-iOS device, doesn't mean anything if there is not an attractive application base.
- r00fus 15y ago
  I actually think this is untrue. For those who use it extensively, they probably feel $500ish is worth what they paid. For those who don't, sure they might wish they had spent less, but are these folks going to be satisfied with less functionality/apps/screensize/etc? The iPad is popular with kids and elderly alike mostly due to it's larger screen size.
- wmboy 15y ago
  The majority of people (that I know) with iPads are using them for consuming content or playing games - something they could easily do for $300 less with a Amazon Fire. No 3G, not much storage space, lower resolution (as soon as Apple releases iPad's with retina display) and lack of an Apple logo make the Fire inferior, but with a much lower price it could make things interesting.
fab13n 15y ago
The business model to compete with Apple has been known for extremely long: offer lesser products at lesser prices. Everyone else failed at the "lesser price" part. Amazon can pull it off, because they don't need to make money with the tablet: as long as it sells ebooks and movies, it remains profitable for them. Since there's nobody to challenge them on this market, they will get the volumes to drive the BOM prices down, too. HP hadn't the option to make money by selling ink cartridges for subsidized tablets, as they used to do with printers...
- achompas 15y ago
  Since there's nobody to challenge them on this market, they will get the volumes to drive the BOM prices down, too. Barnes & Noble is in this space too, and they have hundreds of stores that will serve as points-of-sale for the Nook. Don't forget them. EDIT: apologies to the European HNers. Still, those B&M stores in America are incredibly popular, making it easier for Barnes & Noble to find new Nook users.
  - commandar 15y ago
    >they have hundreds of stores that will serve as points-of-sale for the Nook. I've seen Kindles in Wal-marts and Targets recently.
  - mhw 15y ago
    I'm in London. Where's my nearest B&N so I can go and pick one up?
    - babblefrog 15y ago
      Right next to the Amazon store ;-)
      - pork 15y ago
        You jest, but I think an Amazon store could be a cool idea -- they simply stock a revolving selection of their best rated books from every genre.
schrototo 15y ago
I don't think Apple has ever promoted its products as "luxurious". Jobs introduced the iPad as "a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price". I think that Bezos quote is actually very Apple-like, what with "people are going to love these" and so on.
- antimarketing 15y ago
  I bet everybody who was a stakeholder in the release of this project had a long talk about messaging this a'la Steve Jobs.
- miles_matthias 15y ago
  From the clip I saw, Bezos looked awkward and nervous. He looked like the wind was already out of his sails, which doesn't help to create that rock concert environment if that's what he wanted. He paused a lot to wait for applause and got crickets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whOlvV3HYFM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whOlvV3HYFM
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    He's doing what the RIM CEO did when presenting the playbook! He's clutching a tablet-shaped-MacGuffin which may as well be a bottle of water for all his body language says about it.
  - nroach 15y ago
    That clip is disturbing. I understand that not everyone can replicate Jobs' reality distortion field. But, why is Bezos not excited about his own product? There should be a natural enthusiasm that is missing onstage there. And, it's not that Bezos can't do it when he tries! I've seen interviews where he was clearly invigorated about little stuff like shipping infrastructure and AWS details. So this should have been a no-brainer. Maybe he's gotten a sneak preview of what Apple has in store for October and it's now too late to change course.
    - cincinnatus 15y ago
nhangen 15y ago
"Developers need to think about this as another golden ticket. Here's the iOS gold rush, part deux." My thoughts exactly.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
joebadmo 15y ago
The most interesting thing to me is that the Fire doesn't seem to have pretensions about replacing computing, though it theoretically could just as much an iPad or Android tablet. There's an app store, but they seem to be only pushing games on it, and the main thrust seems to sit squarely on consumption. Especially at this price point, it's not a replacement for a computer, it's squarely a supplement. I think I prefer this vision to Apple's. It feels more democratic in that I think the iPad wants to replace computing, but privilege consumption at the expense of production. Amazon's vision is still one of centralized distribution of content, but it strikes me as one that's comfortable coexisting with the Web model of distributed, democratic content production. Some earlier discussion on the topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955516 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955516 [Edit: Here's another take by Nilay Patel of This Is My Next on a similar point: http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/28/editorial-kindle-fire-ipad/ http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/28/editorial-kindle-fire-ipa... ]
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Totally agree with this insight. One of the fallouts of the tech bubble and ubiquitious computing trend was that it became so 'cheap' to add programability features and customization that everything got more computer like. The backlash, things like the cell phones for elderly people which act like 'normal' phones was the result. Also the market seems to be pushing back on things like TVs that are also internet browsers. So the vision here is very important, and the Kindle as simply a window that lets you look at the books you have is pretty compelling. The $80 ad supported one, I want an open source text book library for that. The school district can give those to every student and save money.
  - krishna2 15y ago
    "school district can give those to every student" How cool would that be! My library finally got the overdrive support so I wanted to check out an e-book (an audiobook) to try out on my kindle/iphone. And found a nice book that I wanted to read and the page says, "available copies : 0, library copies : 1, No. of patrons in waiting list : 23, Click here to add yourself to the waiting list". File this under w.t.f.
Steko 15y ago
"This populist attitude has been missing from the tablet market since the iPad's release." Disagree completely. Everyone expected the iPad to cost $999, but they came in at a superlow price point that no one else could compete with and have sold tens of millions. To paraphrase Bezos and Andy Warhol at the same time the iPad is the Coke of tablets, we're still waiting for a Pepsi and every working class guy on the street knows he can get the same iPad as the President and no amount of money can get you a better tablet then the iPad that guy on the bus has. That's populism in the tablet market (or as they say, ipad market) to me.
lukifer 15y ago
> The Fire will be the first successful Android tablet I think credit for this should actually go to the Nook Color. Anecdotally, I actually know more Nook owners than iPad owners.
krishna2 15y ago
"Amazon won't steal Apple's customers" - Absolutely correct. But all the other android tablet makers pricing their tablet anything over $300 will all get screwed by this for sure. [I cannot see what else they can do to justify double the price of the Fire without some brilliant ideas and innovations.]. They all refuse to do anything to the software. They also cannot match Apple's (and probably soon Amazon's) scale and huge volumes to get a good price on bulk-hardware. Nor do they have the "content" and "user base with credit cards" to match that of Apple and Amazon. Good news is that we can expect more HP-touchpad like fire sales. Bad news is very few are going to want those even at those prices. Amazon brilliantly played to their strengths. Kudos to Jeff Bezos and team!
riverlaw 15y ago
"This populist attitude has been missing from the tablet market since the iPad's release." I do not agree with this at all. Before the iPad the tablet market was ~$1500 laptops. Now amazon has come out with a tablet that they did not have to design the hardware or software. Great, but do not knock the iPad for price, as it cost something to create a design people want to buy.

jkincaid 15y ago

"With this price, though, Amazon won't steal Apple's customers.." I think a lot of people with iPads would have been more than happy to spend half as much to get an easy-to-use tablet.

achompas 15y ago
I hesitate to agree because it seems like the iPad and Fire will provide different experiences. For what it's worth, I couldn't justify an iPad for $500. I would absolutely consider a Fire for $200 (or a Fire 3G for $250-300).
- LearnYouALisp 15y ago
  He or she is saying that some people who were not looking for the advanced features bought the iPad because it was the only tablet available beyond some minimum.
  - CWuestefeld 15y ago
    Awareness is also a big factor. My mom (she's a minister) just got an iPad, when all she needed was a handheld device with which she can scroll the text of a eulogy, when she's at a grave doing a funeral. The lowliest of tablets can handle this task, but "iPad" is all people talk about. If Amazon can generate buzz -- and I think they can -- then it would certainly erode sales such as my mom's.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
cormullion 15y ago
A lot of price comparisons are based simply on initial purchase price. If you take into account pre- and post-sale service and support, build quality, longterm reliability, resale value over time, to name a few, it's harder to simply compare purchase prices. I think there will also be some people who will end up with Kindle Fires who probably - secretly - wanted iPads. Santa will be able to save a few dollars this year...
Bud 15y ago
Yeah, a lot of people think they know this market and what people "would" buy, and all of them except the guys selling iPads have been wrong so far. Batting average of everyone else: .000. "Easy-to-use", which is far from a given on a non-iOS device, doesn't mean anything if there is not an attractive application base.
r00fus 15y ago
I actually think this is untrue. For those who use it extensively, they probably feel $500ish is worth what they paid. For those who don't, sure they might wish they had spent less, but are these folks going to be satisfied with less functionality/apps/screensize/etc? The iPad is popular with kids and elderly alike mostly due to it's larger screen size.
wmboy 15y ago
The majority of people (that I know) with iPads are using them for consuming content or playing games - something they could easily do for $300 less with a Amazon Fire. No 3G, not much storage space, lower resolution (as soon as Apple releases iPad's with retina display) and lack of an Apple logo make the Fire inferior, but with a much lower price it could make things interesting.

fab13n 15y ago

The business model to compete with Apple has been known for extremely long: offer lesser products at lesser prices. Everyone else failed at the "lesser price" part. Amazon can pull it off, because they don't need to make money with the tablet: as long as it sells ebooks and movies, it remains profitable for them. Since there's nobody to challenge them on this market, they will get the volumes to drive the BOM prices down, too. HP hadn't the option to make money by selling ink cartridges for subsidized tablets, as they used to do with printers...

achompas 15y ago
Since there's nobody to challenge them on this market, they will get the volumes to drive the BOM prices down, too. Barnes & Noble is in this space too, and they have hundreds of stores that will serve as points-of-sale for the Nook. Don't forget them. EDIT: apologies to the European HNers. Still, those B&M stores in America are incredibly popular, making it easier for Barnes & Noble to find new Nook users.
- commandar 15y ago
  >they have hundreds of stores that will serve as points-of-sale for the Nook. I've seen Kindles in Wal-marts and Targets recently.
- mhw 15y ago
  I'm in London. Where's my nearest B&N so I can go and pick one up?
  - babblefrog 15y ago
    Right next to the Amazon store ;-)
    - pork 15y ago
      You jest, but I think an Amazon store could be a cool idea -- they simply stock a revolving selection of their best rated books from every genre.

schrototo 15y ago

I don't think Apple has ever promoted its products as "luxurious". Jobs introduced the iPad as "a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price". I think that Bezos quote is actually very Apple-like, what with "people are going to love these" and so on.

antimarketing 15y ago
I bet everybody who was a stakeholder in the release of this project had a long talk about messaging this a'la Steve Jobs.
miles_matthias 15y ago
From the clip I saw, Bezos looked awkward and nervous. He looked like the wind was already out of his sails, which doesn't help to create that rock concert environment if that's what he wanted. He paused a lot to wait for applause and got crickets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whOlvV3HYFM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whOlvV3HYFM
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  He's doing what the RIM CEO did when presenting the playbook! He's clutching a tablet-shaped-MacGuffin which may as well be a bottle of water for all his body language says about it.
- nroach 15y ago
  That clip is disturbing. I understand that not everyone can replicate Jobs' reality distortion field. But, why is Bezos not excited about his own product? There should be a natural enthusiasm that is missing onstage there. And, it's not that Bezos can't do it when he tries! I've seen interviews where he was clearly invigorated about little stuff like shipping infrastructure and AWS details. So this should have been a no-brainer. Maybe he's gotten a sneak preview of what Apple has in store for October and it's now too late to change course.
  - cincinnatus 15y ago

nhangen 15y ago

"Developers need to think about this as another golden ticket. Here's the iOS gold rush, part deux." My thoughts exactly.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

joebadmo 15y ago

The most interesting thing to me is that the Fire doesn't seem to have pretensions about replacing computing, though it theoretically could just as much an iPad or Android tablet. There's an app store, but they seem to be only pushing games on it, and the main thrust seems to sit squarely on consumption. Especially at this price point, it's not a replacement for a computer, it's squarely a supplement. I think I prefer this vision to Apple's. It feels more democratic in that I think the iPad wants to replace computing, but privilege consumption at the expense of production. Amazon's vision is still one of centralized distribution of content, but it strikes me as one that's comfortable coexisting with the Web model of distributed, democratic content production. Some earlier discussion on the topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955516 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955516 [Edit: Here's another take by Nilay Patel of This Is My Next on a similar point: http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/28/editorial-kindle-fire-ipad/ http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/28/editorial-kindle-fire-ipa... ]

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Totally agree with this insight. One of the fallouts of the tech bubble and ubiquitious computing trend was that it became so 'cheap' to add programability features and customization that everything got more computer like. The backlash, things like the cell phones for elderly people which act like 'normal' phones was the result. Also the market seems to be pushing back on things like TVs that are also internet browsers. So the vision here is very important, and the Kindle as simply a window that lets you look at the books you have is pretty compelling. The $80 ad supported one, I want an open source text book library for that. The school district can give those to every student and save money.
- krishna2 15y ago
  "school district can give those to every student" How cool would that be! My library finally got the overdrive support so I wanted to check out an e-book (an audiobook) to try out on my kindle/iphone. And found a nice book that I wanted to read and the page says, "available copies : 0, library copies : 1, No. of patrons in waiting list : 23, Click here to add yourself to the waiting list". File this under w.t.f.

Steko 15y ago

"This populist attitude has been missing from the tablet market since the iPad's release." Disagree completely. Everyone expected the iPad to cost $999, but they came in at a superlow price point that no one else could compete with and have sold tens of millions. To paraphrase Bezos and Andy Warhol at the same time the iPad is the Coke of tablets, we're still waiting for a Pepsi and every working class guy on the street knows he can get the same iPad as the President and no amount of money can get you a better tablet then the iPad that guy on the bus has. That's populism in the tablet market (or as they say, ipad market) to me.

lukifer 15y ago

> The Fire will be the first successful Android tablet I think credit for this should actually go to the Nook Color. Anecdotally, I actually know more Nook owners than iPad owners.

krishna2 15y ago

"Amazon won't steal Apple's customers" - Absolutely correct. But all the other android tablet makers pricing their tablet anything over $300 will all get screwed by this for sure. [I cannot see what else they can do to justify double the price of the Fire without some brilliant ideas and innovations.]. They all refuse to do anything to the software. They also cannot match Apple's (and probably soon Amazon's) scale and huge volumes to get a good price on bulk-hardware. Nor do they have the "content" and "user base with credit cards" to match that of Apple and Amazon. Good news is that we can expect more HP-touchpad like fire sales. Bad news is very few are going to want those even at those prices. Amazon brilliantly played to their strengths. Kudos to Jeff Bezos and team!

riverlaw 15y ago

"This populist attitude has been missing from the tablet market since the iPad's release." I do not agree with this at all. Before the iPad the tablet market was ~$1500 laptops. Now amazon has come out with a tablet that they did not have to design the hardware or software. Great, but do not knock the iPad for price, as it cost something to create a design people want to buy.