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Kindle Fire promises to burn Android to the ground
September 30th, 2011 by Daniel Eran Dilger
- drivebyacct2 15y agoIgnoring the fact that developers can trivially write apps that target Kindle Fire and regular Android tablets with literally no effort to distinguish them required? >That’s because the Kindle Fire will destroy Google’s ability to enhance, extend and improve Android on tablet hardware, effectively substituting Google’s ambitious plans with Amazon’s rather pedestrian goals of delivering a movie playing, basic app running ebook reader that technically “runs” Android while it figuratively runs it into the ground. What? A different, modified UI means that Amazon will stop keeping their common Android codebase in sync with upstream AOSP? That's ludicrous. Is the author assuming that the Kindle will dwarf all other Android tablets, so much that devs are encouraged to develop for it (which is still a subset of AOSP) rather than all generic Android devices? How do people so quickly forget everyone decrying Android's first year as a phone OS?
- gte910h 15y agoThis could dwarf other android non-phone sales. There is something about price points in the low hundreds that really ramps up the device sales. >Amazon will stop keeping their common Android codebase in sync with upstream AOSP They may just stick to 2.2, yes. Ice Cream Sandwich has a huge chance of never running on these devices except when user installed.
- barista 15y agoIts one of the bnefits as well as perils of open source. And it will benefit the platform as a whole. Amazon cannot afford to move too far away from the core android that is developed by Google as it will otherwise lose all the new apps and capabilities. It will benefir them to follow androd whereever google takes it.
- gte910h 15y agoThey honestly aren't caring so much about the apps. It's a color kindle to them at the moment. Look at all the marketing, scarcely a mention of apps and app stores anywhere.
- mikhailt 15y agoIt depends on how far they have forked the OS. At this moment, I don't think Amazon cares about anything Google does. They already have the OS customized to meet their ends, anything they need, they can extend the OS themselves and that's what they have done. They are not sharing the code back to Android's ecosystem, so there are no benefits to the Android platform at all. One more thing to keep in mind, the millions that'll buy Fire will not see it as an Android device, they'll see it as a Kindle tablet which is not the same thing as an Android device. It doesn't benefit Amazon at all to follow Google, which was what this article was saying. If Kindle Fire really takes off well, the sales it generates will lure the developers away from Google toward Amazon as the leader for Android apps. Developers want to target the largest markets and with Fire, they can do just that.
- Hyena 15y agoSharing code back isn't the only way to assist the ecosystem. As long as compatibility is good, the Fire will encourage more app development. It will also encourage app developmet at its form factor, which might finally start opening up the Android tablet market.
- Tichy 15y agoI think these issues are really overblown. Few apps would use the latest APIs anyway, since that would exclude a large number of devices from running the app. Also of course Google is/was aware that some competitors would chose to remove the Google apps completely.
- DrHankPym 15y agoI have the opposite impression. Finally a cheap tablet that runs Android apps. To me, that's an increase in Android user-base, so I'll take it.