" I don't think they'll put something on the market that doesn't have attention grabbing value." I would submit that having attention grabbing value isn't remo

" I don't think they'll put something on the market that doesn't have attention grabbing value." I would submit that having attention grabbing value isn't remotely enough. It has to have actual value, hopefully in a way that goes beyond price. The Kindle Fire is a perfect example. They won't say how many they have sold, but at the end of the day, it yet another Android tablet with a crappy, laggy software experience and an App store that lacks broad developer support. You can argue that it does provide good price value. "I don't think the OS is that important. " I don't agree. For a myriad of reasons the OS is important. You can't just have email, a camera, a map, and good hardware, but rather you need to have an ecosystem and content delivery machine (at the very least good partnerships). And how this ecosystem is executed on every level is crucial. Not only that, but none of that even matters if you don't have developer support for apps. Sans that, your platform is going to die eventually, if it ever even scales to begin with, no question. I think providing some additional value is needed in order to get adoption up to the point where developers start delivering the broad app offerings that are required. But I do agree with you that price is a great weapon in Amazon's arsenal. If they let consumers have them free or cheap, keeping their margins near zero with the aid of the carrier subsidy, that could be huge, especially if they deliver an experience competitive with newer, non-forked Android offerings. But the Kindle Fire hasn't exactly spoken much to this point thus far. Regarding Palm, the OS was the only thing good about it, as I mentioned. The problems were no apps and poor hardware. I'd put all my money on it failing if it had a 4" screen and said 'Sony'. Sony is one of the last companies I could see bringing a new mobile OS to market. Not to pan them, but I'm trying to think of the last innovative initiative they've executed. All that comes to mind is a clear demonstration of their inability to handle content delivery with the inexcusable Playstation debacle, their flailing 'Sony Style' stores that nobody goes to, and a hope to return to profitability this year (the company made no money last year, registering a loss of 67.3 billion). HP had a much better shot, but they failed too.