9 ms·

This is about how many iPads Apple sells, just at a much lower price point. I imagine these numbers are going to grow rapidly once people actually see the hardw

This is about how many iPads Apple sells, just at a much lower price point. I imagine these numbers are going to grow rapidly once people actually see the hardware. The market isn't even close to tapped.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
It's also worth remembering that the Kindle Fire's firmware is based off of Android 2.1. There are some major performance improvements in 2.2 and 2.3 (JITing, better kernel memory management, concurrent garbage collection, etc.) amongst a lot of other improvements. It seems likely that Amazon will refresh the firmware for the Fire in a few months, that will only increase sales. As far as the market overall, it's effectively untapped at this point. Long term, tablets are going to be the dominant personal computing device. That's a market of, say, 1-2 billion tablets within the next 10 years. Definitely not tapped.
- trobertson 15y ago
  As far as I know, there hasn't been any definite information on the difference between the Kindle stack and the Android 2.1 stack. I would be very surprised if Amazon hasn't done some downstream merging or porting of the features you mentioned, or been working on similar speed and performance improvements on their own. At this point, Amazon knows that they need a fast, performant tablet in order to do well in the market. Historically speaking, they know that moving first (into the non-premium tablet market) will not guarantee success. Quality does. In regards to the tablet market, I'm not sure about 1-2 billion tablet customers. That's 1-2 out of every seven people owning a tablet, which is probably not realistic. I can see an easy 500 million customer in 5 years, which is a very conservative estimate. Whether the trend will continue past 1 billion, though, isn't really predictable right now. If tablet do end up becoming the computers for non-techies, though, then your prediction will probably hold, though it may be more like 15 years.
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    The Kindle Fire supports VP8 out-of-the-box. Native Android support for VP8 didn't arrive until Gingerbread (2.3.3, to be exact). Even without official confirmation this is a pretty significant tell that the Kindle Fire is Gingerbread-based.
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  Most articles I've seen post-unveiling say the launch firmware will be (based on) 2.3. The bit about it running 2.1 is leftover from the rumor mill (which isn't surprising, odds are 2.1 was just out when they started the project). I'm more curious to see if Amazon will keep in sync with ICS (presuming Google makes good on their word to open the source) or give Android a proper total forking.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    Ah, well then! All the more reason to buy it on day one.
  - fpgeek 15y ago
    On the subject of total forking, I noticed an interesting tidbit today: (a) the Amazon Appstore's guidelines say Android 1.6 and up is supported (with no other qualifications) (b) they have Honeycomb apps in the Appstore That's a small suggestion that they're looking to keep Android compatibility going forward (otherwise why let in apps that can't run on the Kindle Fire today?). Perhaps they were just trying to not tip their hand, but restricting things to Gingerbread and below doesn't sound that unusual to me.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

It's also worth remembering that the Kindle Fire's firmware is based off of Android 2.1. There are some major performance improvements in 2.2 and 2.3 (JITing, better kernel memory management, concurrent garbage collection, etc.) amongst a lot of other improvements. It seems likely that Amazon will refresh the firmware for the Fire in a few months, that will only increase sales. As far as the market overall, it's effectively untapped at this point. Long term, tablets are going to be the dominant personal computing device. That's a market of, say, 1-2 billion tablets within the next 10 years. Definitely not tapped.

trobertson 15y ago
As far as I know, there hasn't been any definite information on the difference between the Kindle stack and the Android 2.1 stack. I would be very surprised if Amazon hasn't done some downstream merging or porting of the features you mentioned, or been working on similar speed and performance improvements on their own. At this point, Amazon knows that they need a fast, performant tablet in order to do well in the market. Historically speaking, they know that moving first (into the non-premium tablet market) will not guarantee success. Quality does. In regards to the tablet market, I'm not sure about 1-2 billion tablet customers. That's 1-2 out of every seven people owning a tablet, which is probably not realistic. I can see an easy 500 million customer in 5 years, which is a very conservative estimate. Whether the trend will continue past 1 billion, though, isn't really predictable right now. If tablet do end up becoming the computers for non-techies, though, then your prediction will probably hold, though it may be more like 15 years.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  The Kindle Fire supports VP8 out-of-the-box. Native Android support for VP8 didn't arrive until Gingerbread (2.3.3, to be exact). Even without official confirmation this is a pretty significant tell that the Kindle Fire is Gingerbread-based.
ConstantineXVI 15y ago
Most articles I've seen post-unveiling say the launch firmware will be (based on) 2.3. The bit about it running 2.1 is leftover from the rumor mill (which isn't surprising, odds are 2.1 was just out when they started the project). I'm more curious to see if Amazon will keep in sync with ICS (presuming Google makes good on their word to open the source) or give Android a proper total forking.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Ah, well then! All the more reason to buy it on day one.
- fpgeek 15y ago
  On the subject of total forking, I noticed an interesting tidbit today: (a) the Amazon Appstore's guidelines say Android 1.6 and up is supported (with no other qualifications) (b) they have Honeycomb apps in the Appstore That's a small suggestion that they're looking to keep Android compatibility going forward (otherwise why let in apps that can't run on the Kindle Fire today?). Perhaps they were just trying to not tip their hand, but restricting things to Gingerbread and below doesn't sound that unusual to me.