In the next couple of months, just in time for Christmas, Amazon will release its much-touted tablet. We don’t know its name, and we know scant few other details, but we do know enough to form a succinct, if blurry, picture. For a start, we know that this tablet — let’s call it the Kindle Tab or Kindle Plus — will not be an iPad 2 competitor. We’re also fairly certain that the Kindle Plus will be priced at $250, or possibly even less — it will be an upgrade from the $189 Kindle 3G, in other words — and as we know from the $99 HP TouchPad fire sale, a low cost might be the key to success in the Apple-dominated tablet market.
From the price point, we can surmise that most of the cost savings will come from a smaller display and touchscreen assembly, probably around the 8-inch ballpark, or perhaps even smaller — 6-inch, like the size of a Kindle. With regards to the rest of the hardware, it will most likely feature a cost-effective OMAP SoC from TI, which brings all of the usual connectivity options — and it’s fairly safe to assume that there’ll be a cheap Wi-Fi variant, and costlier 3G “Whispernet” version.
Most importantly, though, Amazon’s new tablet will run the Android operating system; a highly-customized version of Android, no doubt, but still fundamentally Android. This is either fantastically awesome or a cataclysmically devastating for Android, depending on your point of view. On the positive side, Amazon is one of the biggest retailers in the world, and the success of the Kindle will almost certainly be mirrored by the Kindle Tab, which will be advertised on every page of the Amazon website and on a glossy leaflet inside every Amazon box.
It’s true that the Amazon Appstore for Android hasn’t been a perfect release, but that’s because it’s a second class citizen on smartphones; on the Amazon tablet, the exact opposite will be true. You see, if Amazon goes down the custom-build route — which it surely will — it will ensure that all of its first-party services are front and center. The Android Market will be replaced by the Amazon Appstore. Instead of the default Music app, there’ll be Amazon MP3, with its built-in Amazon Cloud Player functionality. There’s a Kindle for Android app, too — and yes, if you needed confirmation, you can be 100% sure that the Kindle Tab will be a first-rate e-book reader. You could even imagine Amazon releasing some kind of “catalog” app, which would let Kindle Tab users order stuff from Amazon with just a few finger prods.
On the end-is-nigh side of the equation, though, there’s no avoiding the fact that Amazon’s custom build of Android will be a fork. We don’t know the exact details, but basically Amazon will have taken Android 2.2 or 2.3 — both of which were released as part of the Android Open Source Project — and rolled its own version. Because of Android’s Apache license, Amazon doesn’t even have to share the changes it makes. In other words, when the Kindle Tab emerges, there will be two very distinct branches of Android: Google’s web-oriented version, and Amazon’s highly-customized Amazon-oriented version.
Now, we have to assume — to begin with — that Amazon’s Android build will be fully backwards compatible with the thousands of Android 1.0 and 2.0 smartphone apps and games. It might even be compatible with the handful of extant Honeycomb apps; Amazon can’t market a tablet that has no apps, after all. If the Kindle Tab is successful, though, and Amazon continues to develop and further specialize its Amazoid fork, cross-platform compatibility will almost certainly suffer.
At this point, app developers will have to choose their target carefully: the massively successful but poorly monetizable Android smartphones; the weak “iPad killer” Android tablets; or Amazon’s cheap-and-cheerful Kindle Tab. There are too many variables to predict how that little scenario will pan out, but just the sheer possibility that Amazon is about to go head-to-head with Google will be causing some sleepless nights in and around the Googleplex, and some very heated CEO-level discussions throughout the technology industry.
If all that wasn’t terrifying enough, here’s another thought: if Kindle Tab is a success, there’s nothing stopping Amazon from distributing its version of Android to other tablet and e-book reader manufacturers. All of the features are built into the software, after all, not the tablet — so Amazon has very little to lose by sharing its OS, and millions of new Kindle, MP3, and Appstore users to gain.
Finally, with the dark pall of patent litigation hanging over Google and Android, Amazon’s version of Android might actually be reworked to remove offending blocks of code. Amazon might also have obtained licensing agreements from Oracle, Microsoft, and others that indemnifies Amazoid OEMs and developers from feeling the sharp brunt of patent warfare.
In short, Amazon’s upcoming tablet, if it’s a success, will probably kill off the nascent Android Honeycomb tablets. It’s unlikely to affect the Android smartphone market — but the option of a cheaper, feature-rich, well-supported and easy-to-use tablet could definitely make a dent in Apple’s meteoric iPad sales.
From the price point, we can surmise that most of the cost savings will come from a smaller display and touchscreen assembly, probably around the 8-inch ballpark, or perhaps even smaller — 6-inch, like the size of a Kindle. With regards to the rest of the hardware, it will most likely feature a cost-effective OMAP SoC from TI, which brings all of the usual connectivity options — and it’s fairly safe to assume that there’ll be a cheap Wi-Fi variant, and costlier 3G “Whispernet” version.
Most importantly, though, Amazon’s new tablet will run the Android operating system; a highly-customized version of Android, no doubt, but still fundamentally Android. This is either fantastically awesome or a cataclysmically devastating for Android, depending on your point of view. On the positive side, Amazon is one of the biggest retailers in the world, and the success of the Kindle will almost certainly be mirrored by the Kindle Tab, which will be advertised on every page of the Amazon website and on a glossy leaflet inside every Amazon box.
It’s true that the Amazon Appstore for Android hasn’t been a perfect release, but that’s because it’s a second class citizen on smartphones; on the Amazon tablet, the exact opposite will be true. You see, if Amazon goes down the custom-build route — which it surely will — it will ensure that all of its first-party services are front and center. The Android Market will be replaced by the Amazon Appstore. Instead of the default Music app, there’ll be Amazon MP3, with its built-in Amazon Cloud Player functionality. There’s a Kindle for Android app, too — and yes, if you needed confirmation, you can be 100% sure that the Kindle Tab will be a first-rate e-book reader. You could even imagine Amazon releasing some kind of “catalog” app, which would let Kindle Tab users order stuff from Amazon with just a few finger prods.On the end-is-nigh side of the equation, though, there’s no avoiding the fact that Amazon’s custom build of Android will be a fork. We don’t know the exact details, but basically Amazon will have taken Android 2.2 or 2.3 — both of which were released as part of the Android Open Source Project — and rolled its own version. Because of Android’s Apache license, Amazon doesn’t even have to share the changes it makes. In other words, when the Kindle Tab emerges, there will be two very distinct branches of Android: Google’s web-oriented version, and Amazon’s highly-customized Amazon-oriented version.
Now, we have to assume — to begin with — that Amazon’s Android build will be fully backwards compatible with the thousands of Android 1.0 and 2.0 smartphone apps and games. It might even be compatible with the handful of extant Honeycomb apps; Amazon can’t market a tablet that has no apps, after all. If the Kindle Tab is successful, though, and Amazon continues to develop and further specialize its Amazoid fork, cross-platform compatibility will almost certainly suffer.
At this point, app developers will have to choose their target carefully: the massively successful but poorly monetizable Android smartphones; the weak “iPad killer” Android tablets; or Amazon’s cheap-and-cheerful Kindle Tab. There are too many variables to predict how that little scenario will pan out, but just the sheer possibility that Amazon is about to go head-to-head with Google will be causing some sleepless nights in and around the Googleplex, and some very heated CEO-level discussions throughout the technology industry.
If all that wasn’t terrifying enough, here’s another thought: if Kindle Tab is a success, there’s nothing stopping Amazon from distributing its version of Android to other tablet and e-book reader manufacturers. All of the features are built into the software, after all, not the tablet — so Amazon has very little to lose by sharing its OS, and millions of new Kindle, MP3, and Appstore users to gain.
Finally, with the dark pall of patent litigation hanging over Google and Android, Amazon’s version of Android might actually be reworked to remove offending blocks of code. Amazon might also have obtained licensing agreements from Oracle, Microsoft, and others that indemnifies Amazoid OEMs and developers from feeling the sharp brunt of patent warfare.
In short, Amazon’s upcoming tablet, if it’s a success, will probably kill off the nascent Android Honeycomb tablets. It’s unlikely to affect the Android smartphone market — but the option of a cheaper, feature-rich, well-supported and easy-to-use tablet could definitely make a dent in Apple’s meteoric iPad sales.
