Amazon Kindle Fire

Much has already been written about this but my take on what I believe is an effective strategy.

Amazon has leveraged masterfully off of their strengths and did several flanking maneuvers to both Apple and Google. First, they only took the open source Android code, they don’t have any of the Google Mobile suite services built into the product therefore they didn’t even need to talk to Google. They then built a custom user interface, which early reports seems to have been executed very well. Having built up their own Amazon App store for the last 6 months or so was clearly in preparation for this. So now they have a viable App store that is also not dependent on Google. As Amazon has large number of ecommerce customers already they arguably are in a better position than even Android Market. They were also smart in not taking Apple on head on. All of the recent non iPad tablets have been struggling in the market. Over time they their share should improve. But as of now, they haven’t had a significant enough price advantage nor a large enough ecosystem to take on Apple. Amazon is almost in the unique situation of being able to subsidize the product. While Amazons app ecosystem isn’t as strong as Apples, they have enough in terms of content services and enough apps that the lower price point can help push this through. In all very well done by Amazon.