“We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they
buy our devices”
Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday September 6th 2012AD during an event
hosted in Santa Monica, California
Amazon,
the Tangerine coloured Online Retailer that made books popular with its Kindle
line of e-readers, has done it yet again, this time in the Tablet Space.
Gooooooooo Amazon!!
Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday September 6th 2012AD during an event
hosted in Santa Monica, California unleashed upon the Tablet World a Quartet of
Kindle Fires and an improved au pair
of Kindle e-readers as stated in the article “Kindle
Fire HD: Amazon's anti-Apple profit
engine”, published September 6, 2012 12:55 PM PDT by Roger
Cheng, CNET News.
Apparently
the Family has grown, with the Kindle Fire Family now rivaling the Original
Kindle E-reader family in size and importance. What can already be drawn from
this product launch is the obvious; there are five (5) new additions to the
Kindle family; two (2) Kindle Paperwhite e-readers and a three (3) Kindle Fire
HD.
More
interestingly, the expansion of the Kindle Fire line, the inclusion of HD
Screens and the support for Wireless Broadband (the main reason this product
launch caught my eye!) suggests a shifting of Gears and changing of focus by Amazon from purely
e-readers to Tablets that can challenge the Apple iPad.
It
now becoming clear that Amazon
wants to stake its claim to the rapidly growing Tablet market estimated to be
about 100 million served as per the statistics of analyst ABI by the end of
2012AD in the article “Tablet
sales could top 100 million”, published Friday, August 24,
2012, The Jamaica
Observer.
Thus
if Google thinks that its Wi-Fi only Google Nexus 7 can beat the Amazon Kindle and take
away its e-reader market, The
Lorax (2012), begins to Sparkle (2012)
and is fighting back!
The
Second iteration of by far the most successful product ever as stated in the
article “Kindle
Fire 'Sold Out' as new model looms”, published 30 August
2012 by Lance Whitney, CNET
News
is not just one (1) Kindle Fire, but Three (3).
And
all of them are packing different size HD (High Definition) Screens with their
high-end model, the 8.9” Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE packing – get this - 1,920x1,200 resolution, giving it a PPI (Pixel Per Inch) of
two hundred and fifty four (254). To say I’m blow away is a superlative that
does not truly explain what’s we are all are bearing witness with these new
upgrades to the Kindle Fire Line.
Here
are the basic specs on The
Three Musketeers (2011) as described in “Amazon
Kindle Fire HD”, published September 6, 2012 11:17 AM
PDT, CNET Editor, CNET
News
as follows:
7”
Kindle Fire HD
1.
16GB for US$199
2.
32GB for US$249
3.
7.6" x 5.4" x 0.4" (193
mm x 137 mm x 10.3 mm)
4.
13.9 ounces (395 grams)
5.
High performance 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Texas
Instruments OMAP 4470 Processor
6.
PowerVR 3D graphics Processor
7.
1280x800 HD display with polarizing
filter and anti-glare technology
8.
Dolby Digital Plus Audio
9.
Dual-driver stereo speakers
10. Dual-band,
dual-antenna Wi-Fi support for 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands (a
first for Tablets…interesting!)
11. 11
Hours battery Life with full charging in 4 hours
12. USB
2.0 (micro-B connector) port for connection to a PC or Macintosh computer and
charging
13. Audio
3.5 mm stereo jack
14. Sensors
Ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope
15. External
volume controls
16. Built-in
microphone
17. Built-in
Bluetooth with support for A2DP compatible stereo headphones and speakers
8.9”
Kindle Fire HD
1.
16GB for US$299
2.
32GB for US$369
3.
9.4" x 6.4" x 0.35" (240
mm x 164 mm x 8.8 mm)
4.
20 ounces (567 grams)
5.
High performance 1.5 GHz Dual-Core Texas
Instruments OMAP 4470 Processor
6.
PowerVR 3D graphics Processor
7.
1920x1200 HD display with polarizing
filter and anti-glare technology
8.
Dolby Digital Plus Audio
9.
Dual-driver stereo speakers
10. Dual-band,
dual-antenna Wi-Fi support for 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands
11. USB
2.0 (micro-B connector) port for connection to a PC or Macintosh computer and
charging
12. Audio
3.5 mm stereo jack
13. Sensors
Ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope
14. External
volume controls
15. Built-in
microphone
16. Built-in
Bluetooth with support for A2DP compatible stereo headphones and speakers
8.9”
Kindle Fire HD 4TE
1.
32GB for US$499
2.
64GB for US$599
3.
9.4" x 6.4" x 0.35" (240
mm x 164 mm x 8.8 mm)
4.
20 ounces (575 grams)
5.
High performance 1.5 GHz Dual-Core Texas
Instruments OMAP 4470 Processor
6.
PowerVR 3D graphics Processor
7.
4G LTE 10 band wireless modem with
HSPA+, HSDPA, EDGE/GPRS fallback
8.
Front facing HD Camera
9.
1920x1200 HD display with polarizing
filter and anti-glare technology
10.
Dolby Digital Plus Audio
11. Dual-driver
stereo speakers
12. Dual-band,
dual-antenna Wi-Fi support for 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands
13. USB
2.0 (micro-B connector) port for connection to a PC or Macintosh computer and
charging
14. Audio
3.5 mm stereo jack
15. Sensors
Ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope
16. External
volume controls
17. Built-in
microphone
18. Built-in
Bluetooth with support for A2DP compatible stereo headphones and speakers
Kindle
PaperWhite
1.
US$119 for Kindle PaperWhite Wi-Fi
2.
US$179 for Kindle PaperWhite 3G
3.
6” 212 PPI Paperwhite Display optimized
font technology, 16-level gray scale
4.
Patented built-in light
5.
6.7" x 4.6" x 0.36" (169
mm x 117 mm x 9.1 mm)
6.
Weight 7.5 ounces (213 grams)
7.
2G GB internal, 1.25 GB reserved for
user content
8.
8 weeks based on a half hour of reading
per day with wireless off and the light setting at 10
9.
4 Hours to recharge via USB to computer
10. Wi-Fi
802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2
security using password authentication or Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
The
features, at least for Americans, are quite compelling as well:
Features
for the 7” Kindle Fire HD, 8.9” Kindle Fire HD 4TE and 8.9” Kindle Fire HD 4TE
1.
Over 22 million movies, TV shows, songs,
magazines, books,
3.
Apps for Social Networking and Games
e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, HBO GO, Pandora, and Angry Birds Space
4.
Integrated support for Facebook,
Twitter, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!
5.
Exchange calendar, contacts, and email
6.
Free Skype video calls with front-facing
HD camera
8.
Includes special offers and sponsored
screensavers.
9.
Kindle FreeTime; a personalized tablet
experience just for kids.
10. Prime
Instant Video for unlimited streaming of popular movies and TV titles
11. X-Ray
featured that uses the IMBD Movie Database to bring up onscreen info on movie
characters
12. WhysperSync
for Cloud Storage and synchronization of Cloud content to Kindle
13. Kindle
Owners' Lending Library with 180,000 books to borrow for free with no due dates
14. 100
current and former New York Times best sellers and all 7 Harry Potter books.
Features
for the 8.9” Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE
1.
Ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless from AT&T
2.
250MB for 1 year for $49.99
3.
Optional 3GB and 5GB monthly available
on Telecom Provider AT&T
4.
20GB of additional Cloud Drive storage
The
new, improved kindles also support the following Content Formats:
Content
Formats for Kindle Fire and Kindel E-Reader Family
1.
Documents - Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected
MOBI, PRC natively, DOC, DOCX
2.
Images - JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
3.
Audio Audible Enhanced format (AAX),
Dolby Digital (AC-3), Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3), non-DRM, AAC, MP3, MIDI,
PCM/WAVE, OGG, WAV,
4.
Video - MP4, AAC LC/LTP,
HEAACv1,HE-AACv2, AMR-NB, AMR-WB,
5.
Web Scripting - HTML5, CSS3,
3GP,VP8(.webm)
Curiously
enough in the specs on their website, Amazon
has only mentioned the battery life for their most basic model, the 7” Kindle
Fire HD and the Kindle Paperwhite e-reader; the others have no mentioned
Battery Life. The 4G is only on AT&T and no mention for International
Support for these models.
The
Kindle Paperwhite has 3G support from AT&T as well, understandable, as the
speed is not needed on an e-reader. The measly storage space on the Kindle
Fires is not so bad, as provided that you can sync and back up extra Data on
your external Hard-drive or computer.
Amazon
also claims that their Dual-Core Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 Processor is much
faster and better able to manage multi-tasking than Nvidia Tegra 3 “Kal-el”
Processor, the engine behind the 7” Google Nexus 7 Tablet as described in my blog
article entitled “Google
Nexus 7 Tablet to upgrade to 3G or LTE - Google Nexus 7 is a ParaNorman
Bladerunner to kill the Amazon Kindle Fire 2”.
I’ll
wait on the specs review from CNET before I get on that bandwagon, as
performance is subjective to the tester and cannot be easily derived from
specs, which by logic would suggest a Quad-Core Nvidia Tegra 3 should give
better performance than a Dual-Core Chipset.
Now
that Amazon
Kindle Fire 2 upgrades have made their debut, I must say I’m personally blown
away…..again. This move prompted CNET News Editor David Crothers to declare that
Amazon
had joined the Retina Display club with these high-end upgrades of their most
successful product to date as noted in “Amazon's
Kindle Fire HD joins 'Retina' ranks”, published September
6, 2012 11:10 PM PDT by Brooke Crothers, CNET
News!
For
reference, the 9.7”Apple iPad and the 3.7”
Apple iPhone 4S defines the Retina Display Club with a
2,048-by-1,536 pixel density, yielding two hundred and sixty four) 264 PPI; so
damn close, you have to use a monocle or magnifying glass just to start seeing
the pixels, which are not visible to the naked eye.
This means that the new Amazon Kindle Fires are only 10 pixels short of Retina Display,
prompting Richard Shim, an analyst at DisplaySearch to declare to CNET, quote:
“That puts [8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD] in the same pixel density class as the
iPad Retina”.
Many
had suspected a new Tablet was in the works to the point of speculating that
the product would be launched on Tuesday July 31st 2012 as ruminated
in the article “Kindle
Fire 2 may hit as soon as July”, published June 25,
2012 1:13 PM PDT by David Carnoy, CNET
News.
Alas,
this was not to be, as the date whisked by with nary a peep from Amazon but much
fanfare from Google much ado about their Google Nexus 7 Tablet as stated in my blog
article entitled “Google
Nexus 7 Tablet to upgrade to 3G or LTE - Google Nexus 7 is a ParaNorman
Bladerunner to kill the Amazon Kindle Fire 2”.
Then
the biggest clue that Amazon
has something up its sleeve dropped, when availability for the original Kindle
Fire on Amazon
was no longer evident as stated in the article “Kindle
Fire 'Sold Out' as new model looms”, published 30 August
2012 by Lance Whitney, CNET
News,
a sure indication of a coming new product was coming.
Speculation
was rife as to the nature and number of Kindle Fires (not just Kindles alone)
and if they’d be packing LTE and faster Wi-Fi and a better screen for other
things than just reading books as stated in as stated in the article “At
least three Kindle Fire 2 Tablets, one with 4G, on the way”,
published July 5th 2012, by Lance Whitney, CNET News.
It’s
now also clear after their little adventure during the Christmas period the Amazon Kindle Fire was
– well, on Fire, even took away some of the sales from the Apple iPad as noted
in my blog
article entitled “Apple
iPad 3 Launch on March 2012 - Amazon Kindle Fire is a Sweet
Dream but a Beautiful Nightmare for Apple” and my Geezam blog
article entitled “Amazon
sells 5.5 million Kindle Fires in Fourth Quarter 2012 – Apple iPad sales drop
and plans January Press Event”.
Hence
it explains why Amazon
is now expanding on the success by gunning directly for the Apple iPad. They’ve
even outed a Tablet that sports 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) supports and is
also priced similarly to match the Apple iPad as noted in the specs above and
in the article “Amazon
assaults iPad turf with high-end Kindle Fire HD”,
published September 6, 2012 1:36 PM PDT by Jay Greene, CNET News.
Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos has stated categorically that they are gunning for the Apple
iPad with the higher end 8.9” Amazon
Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE Model, as the specs and the price are in the same
ballpark. His simple to-the-point statement says it all, quote: “We want to have the best tablet at any price”.
Amazon’s
market demographic for the original Kindle Fire was mostly older middle aged
persons who were not so tech savvy and wanted a basic Tablet for reading and
shopping as note in my Geezam
blog
article entitled “Amazon
Kindle Fire vs the Apple iPad – The Stats Wars worth Reading About”.
Amazon's
model, as explained in my Geezam
blog
article entitled “Kindle
Fire vs Nook Color & Apple iPad 2 – Despite the Specs the Price is Still
Right”, is based SOLELY on making money from its Online
Retail Store and spanking New App store.
This
is contrast to Apple's model of using their exclusive services such as Apple
iTunes, Apple iCloud Storage and the Apple App store to drive Apple iPhone and
Apple iPad sales as explained in the article “Kindle
Fire HD: Amazon's anti-Apple profit
engine”, published September 6, 2012 12:55 PM PDT by Roger
Cheng, CNET News.
Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos said as much during the launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire HD
as he admitted carte blanche that Amazon
made virtually no money on the sale of the Tablets, but rather from increased online
purchases on their slew of online services, quote “We
want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices”.
Forrester
Research Analyst Rotman Epps puts it in
perspective, as he explains Amazon
Razor-blade Strategy, quote: “Amazon's
services are the core of its devices, and the devices enhance Amazon's service: a
virtuous cycle where Amazon
gains an increasing share of consumers' wallets”.
Forrester's
recently did a survey that turned some interesting spending trends among online
Credit Card users that supports this model’s success:
2.
18% registered their credit card on an
Apple Account
3.
5% registered their credit card on a
Google Account
As
a way of providing a bit of historical perspective and background, Amazon intended the
Kindle originally to sell more books when it had launched originally, which it
did as noted in my Geezam
blog
article entitled “Piracy
and E-Books in a Tale of Two Cities” and my blog
article entitled “Apple
iPad and Amazon Kindle - Publishers,
Developers and Piracy” it did not accelerate e-Book Piracy as
I’d predicted.
It
would seem that people who genuinely like and read books are not in the same league
as those who download and pirate movies; they are of the intellectual crowd and
thus more respectful of the writer’s craft and are a lot less inclined to steal
books, preferring to purchase them instead for the US$9.99 and upwards prices
that the digital versions are sold.
In
addition, anti-piracy measure on the Amazon
Kindles made it difficult anyway to side-load books onto the Kindle, as the
purchased ones looked so much more professional on you expensive new e-reader.
So out comes the Credit Card and Down-load goes the e-book.
But
when the Kindle Fire came on the scene as stated in my Geezam blog
article entitled “Amazon
lights a Kindle Fire as a Gladiator worthy of the Apple iPad”,
it made Amazon
realize that there was a newer generation of book reader that wanted more than
just to read books.
They
liked media consumption as well and books in Glossy print as the success of the
Barnes and Noble Nook Color had demonstrated, making it a much-love gadget
among women as stated in my blog
article entitled “Women
adore the Barnes and Noble Nook Colour – Free e-reader Home Improvement”.
The
Amazon
Kindle Fire was among a bevy of Kindles being sold by Amazon which were
mainly being sold with the idea of continuing the e-book reading tradition that
the original First Generation Kindle had started as stated in my Geezam blog
article entitled “Kindle
Fire vs Nook Color & Apple iPad 2 – Despite the Specs the Price is Still
Right”.
So
now with the success of the Amazon
Kindle for Amazon
thus far, which this new product launch solidifies by expanding into a whole
family of Kindle Fires, will Apple make an announcement as to a 7” Retina
Display Apple iPad Mini?
Preferably
in 2 versions, a Wi-Fi and a 4G LTE version as recommended in my blog
article entitled “Apple
iPhone 5 Event heralds 4G LTE and 4-inch Screen - New iPod and iMac Refresh
possible as Apple becomes Lawless”?
Whatever
they decide, the Call Center World, part of the ICT (Information and Computer
Technology) Sector) will benefit again from American laziness to read manuals
and the fact the we speak English, albeit not American English as intoned in my
blog
article entitled “Convergys
and Aegis Communications Call Centers Coming – FDI powered Call Center
Renaissance in Jamaica thanks to our Good English”
and “Data
Outsourcing comes to Jamaica via MobileWorks and Freelancer.com - Flexi-Work
propelled by Crowsourcing and MicroWorking Anaconda”.
Already,
the launch of these three (3) Amazon
Kindle Fire HD’s and a single Kindle e-reader has resulted in the local
Jamaican chapter of ACS-Xerox, now called Xerox after retiring the both the
E-Services and ACS (Advanced Computer Systems) brand names as stated in the
article “It's
Xerox now - E-Services name retired” The Jamaica Gleaner
put out Ads in the Sunday Gleaner dated Sunday September 2nd 2012AD
looking for additional CSA (Customer Service Agents). Already, by the time this
is published on my blog, they may have already had a Job Fair at their Naggo
Head Headquarters and begun the intense 6 week training of CSA for Amazon.com
and Amazon.co.uk accounts.
A
benefit to you if you live near Naggo Head, Portmore! Salaries are most likely
to rise to JA$200 per hour and peak to JA$300 per hour range as overtime will
be thrown at the new CSA’s left right and center…. plus incentives!
But
more importantly, thanks to the strong demand for the Amazon Kindle Fire
last year and now the new Kindle Fire HD, the Amazon Account is most
likely to keep the CSA hired for this ram-up period long after the buzz and
excitement of Christmas 2012AD has faded.
ACS-Xerox
are beginning what is effectively a seasonal ramp-up to meet the crush of
demand that is set to peak in Christmas of 2012AD as the Kindle Fire HD’s and
the Kindle Paperwhite e-readers made by Amazon,
The Lorax (2012),
begins to Sparkle
(2012) …….
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