∞ Apple is not worried about the Kindle Fire

Written by

BGR:

Following a meeting with the pair of Apple chief officers, Reitzes delivered a note to investors suggesting that the company sees Amazon’s forthcoming tablet as good news for the iPad. The Kindle Fire’s low price point makes it accessible, but Apple believes it further fragments the Android ecosystem, which may cause consumers to flee to the iPad.

This is just what I said back in September. Kindle Fire will be successful, but it’s not an iPad killer.


  • http://twitter.com/aaronmb Aaron Benedict

    I never thought that the Kindle Fire would be a iPad killer. I think that in someways they are not really comparable. I don’t think it will fragment Android more since they are really doing their own thing and not caring about the newer versions of the Android OS. They are also not trying to clone the iPad user experience and going with a different UI. 

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/CO36G2RP7H3Q43ZWVK4IQAQLAM Ronald

    I think the Kindle Fire will help the iPad as well, although not by fragmentation. I think that the Amazon tablets are priced so cheaply, that it will make it really hard for other Android vendors to compete (Samsung, Asus, Acer, etc.). This could transform the tablet into a 2-company market. As long as Amazon ships low-cost Amazon-centric tablets, they will be hurting Apple’s competition much more than it will hurt Apple.

    The one way fragmentation will help Apple is when looking at tablets and smartphones. I love universal apps that I can use on my iPhone and iPad and synched together with iCloud. I think that Amazon will not care about the smartphone market, so they won’t have the complete echosystem (something that Samsung, for example, could provide).

  • http://twitter.com/Techslacker Jim Huls

    Ronald, with what you describe it will likely lead to more fragmentation. Now that it appears that there will be a strong low price option for tablets which happens to use android, the rest of the android market will be looking to deliver more flavors of the week in an attempt to find some sort of penetration.  That’s all that those companies are good at.

    I never could see the likes of Motorola and others making headway with an ipad competitor.  They just don’t have the retail and market presence that is needed.  People think of those companies as phone companies and they have the carriers to help sell their product along with the years of exposure as being just phone companies. It’s much easier for someone like Amazon to come in and market their product like they have to get some traction in people’s minds that this is a valued product…now they have to execute on it.

    Had Barnes and Noble thought bigger they would have made it much more difficult for Amazon to come into the picture but now they’re likely to get swept away.

    As for MS Apple might get hurt by them the most once Windows 8 gets rolling.  Despite what headlines say about Apple’s penetration into the enterprise market, MS is the enterprise market and they tend to understand it.  Right now Apple is penetrating it not particularly because of their efforts but by the users. There’s not enough effort on Apple’s part right now to stop MS from coming in with a lot of fanfare and doing very well in sales there which then can influence their consumer sales to a great degree.

  • Anonymous

    By reports, out of the gate the Fire is on track to sell 5 million by January. What actual Christmas and after sales will be is yet to be determined but the prospect is huge. What follow on sales may be will depend in part to the feedback from consumers but my bet is more positive than negative.  The reports suggest a follow-on Amazon 10″ tablet that I suspect will also have a zippy price.  There are hard core Apple customers who will never accept anything else.  Will the Amazon Fire sell in the millions absolutely yes.  BTW go back and read some of the predictions about the I-Pad killing e-ink (kindle) for reading.  Time tells the tale.