Amazon sells stuff not hardware and that is why they will be big. Another channel, another device made for selling.
Amazon is in the business of selling books everything else that it does or has done is a side business. Their book warehouses and shipping infrastructure enabled them to sell other physical goods. Their technological infrastructure powering such a large web business is resold as Amazon Web Services. The Kindle was born from a need to sell more digital books. None of these are Amazons core business, they never set out 15 years ago to build cloud computing services and digital book readers but they have and have made them profitable. The Kindle Fire is another Amazon side product that is going to be huge it amazes me how efficient Amazon are monetizing all the extras in their business.
The Kindle Fire announcement and web page are incredibly Steve Jobs like in their tone and design. With phrases like “the best Kindles we’ve ever made” it could only have been more Jobs like if the word Magical was used. That isn’t a criticism of Amazon as I think their device is inherently Apple like. The Kindle Fire seems to have been designed and built not as a tablet, but as a device to read and watch that happens to be a tablet. It has been designed to help Amazons customers buy more in the best way possible it’s that sort of user centric approach that will make it so popular. Other tablet manufacturers, Samsung, looked at the iPad and decided to “make one of those”. Of the many problems that Android tablet manufacturers faced was the Eco system. Hardware manufacturers didn’t have the ability to deliver a tablet with an eco system of books, movies and music. They relied on Google or the mobile networks to do that for them. Consumers however, don’t want a dumb device they want a device that can be used and enjoyed immediately.
Amazon has that eco system and has placed that on a device to sell today. They have apps, books, magazines, movies and music. They also have one click payments. Removing the friction of entering credit card details is essential to making a profitable eco system for publishers. One click enables users to purchase on whim before they have a chance to reconsider.
For android developers, this is an exciting time here stands the chance to make some money on android tablets at last. It’s worth taking a moment to consider though the long term implications of Amazon forking the 2.1 Android code base. Long term what are the implications of maintaining backward compatibility with a 2.1.x code base? Will future editions of the Kindle Fires will they also be 2.1? Will you develop exclusively for Kindle Fire and hope that other tablets will be able to use it? These are very real questions to consider because by early 2012 I can see a future where the Amazon Fire is the dominant Android tablet device. When the 10inch version is released consumers will be making decisions between iPads and Fires other Android tablets won’t figure to much in their consciousness, just like they don’t now.
What remains to be seen is how much of an impact the Fire has on the market share for Android and how Google use it as spin to their advantage in reporting market share.