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The Perils of Bringing a Tablet to Market

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Making a Tablet is not easy. Making one in the wake of the giant path Apple has carved out as it raced to what many perceive is an insurmountable lead is even tougher. We’ve seen many hotly hyped Tablets come and most of those have met with less than enthusiastic responses from the market and gadget reviewers.

Amazon doesn’t want to and really can’t afford to make those same mistakes, missteps, or miscarriages with its Tablet. Nick Bilton in the NY Times Bits Blog has published a piece that offers up some details of Amazon’s road to a Tablet that is talks quite a bit about the decisions made and the delays Amazon may be incurring in bringing this to market. It’s worth a read for the subject matter but also has good context generally. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Executives worried that putting Android on an Amazon tablet would be like opening a new music and video store on a city street already packed with dozens of other music and video stores.

In the end, Amazon realized that if it created its own operating system for its upcoming tablet, it would need to entice developers to build apps on yet another platform

Of course the usual “unnamed sources” are attributed. That, and the info contained, makes me believe that Amazon may indeed be experiencing some real delays and is leaking this info out to help smooth a path prior to any official announcement.

Again, the entire piece is worth a read.

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. Tim

    07/14/2011 at 7:28 pm

    Apple certainly made mistakes, missteps, or miscarriages with its iBooks, so Amazon will be ok if its tablet flunks

  2. Anonymous

    07/14/2011 at 7:30 pm

    Genius move: Amazon Tablet 8.9 (essentially rebadged Samsung 8.9 with Amazon branding slightly different casing) 

    Preinstalled Amazon Apps with Kindle, Amazon Store, App Store, etc.

    Subsidized by Amazon and not carriers.

  3. Tatej

    07/14/2011 at 8:30 pm

    I have so much digital content that is tied to Amazon, I would get one of their tablets even if I already had an iPad.

  4. Tatej

    07/14/2011 at 8:30 pm

    I have so much digital content that is tied to Amazon, I would get one of their tablets even if I already had an iPad.

  5. Anonymous

    07/15/2011 at 3:01 am

    I kind of assumed they might just be waiting for the hardware to be lined up for the series 2 of android tablets.
    From blurbs I have seen, I expect quad core tegras and stuff for the fall.

    The one thing that bothers me is rumors that amazon tablet will be sans camera.
    That is stupid.
    Vid chatting is only going to get more popular, not less.
    Especially so with skype getting in bed with facebook.
    Also Google+ thought enough of the idea to make ‘hangouts’ one of its cornerstone pieces at public reveal.
    Also – even though tablet cams generally suck sometimes you just want a quick pic of something and they are good enough for that.
    I want a swiss-army-knife device and no camera leaves quite a hole in that scheme.

  6. Anonymous

    07/15/2011 at 3:10 am

    Jeez, if that is accurate it sounds like they are going to deliver the nook color – a year after the nook color.

    Not that nook color is not a good little device.
    But what hurts it most is that it lacks things – like a camera!
    I very much hope this article is inaccurate.

    The way to differentiate in this space is by innovating and adding something the other guy does not have or has not thought of – not by subtracting.

    I mean, it sounds like they are thinking of how to compete with the ipad 1.
    They need to be thinking about how they are going to compete with the ipad 3 – which will surely be coming next spring just as soon as everyone has spent holiday cash on ipad 2.

    Apple innovates a lot of stuff, but their marketing and sales strategies not so much.

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