subject: Kindle Fire: It's All About Amazon [print this page] The excitement over the Kindle Fire is huge and like all the other good people who daily wander the wide open spaces on the internet, I just had to have a look. When I saw the glitzy sales page, the ridiculous price (199 dollars), and the list of features this reader tablet offers I was impressed, real impressed. While my right hand reached for my pocket book, alarms were going off else where. They can't even be breaking even on the tablet for this price and after a little detective work I found that in fact, analysts say, they are losing somewhere around fifty dollars a sale. They are also selling faster than hot dogs at the season opener.
Where's The Money?
Not many companies can afford to lose fifty dollars a sale a million times without boarding up the windows but this is Amazon and they are well aware that this is a smoke screen and they are hoping the average consumer won't see through it. There are some top execs at Amazon right now that are living on Rolaids because their quarterly earnings are going to look bleak as January. Business theorists will analyze this event for years. It is a model of carefully considered loss based on future revenues, but more than that, it is a literal gamble. What does Amazon stand to win by pouring this kind of money down the drain on the roll of a dice?
The Company Store
When I looked closer at the Kindle Fire some things bothered me a lot. There is no single feature on this "full featured tablet" that is not directly tied to a revenue source at Amazon. Don't believe me? Read their terms of service. The tablet runs on a highly modified android system and what they fail to mention is that your apps for the Kindle Fire will come from Amazon and since you didn't buy your apps at their store you will probably have to buy them all over again. The number and type of apps that will run on this tablet will be limited to what the Amazon store has to offer and the android platform it operates from. Future offerings could be limited to specific apps designed just for Amazon. Start thinking company store right now if you buy one. You won't find a camera, video camera capability, memory expansion, video output, GPS, Bluetooth support or recording device. So much for a full featured tablet. Digital rights management (DRM) is a means of assuring that the author and digital retailer are compensated for their work. It also protects the work from being copied. DRM formats are as individual as the company providing the service. Transferring your books from one provider to another requires a common format and Amazons format (AWZ) is singular to Kindle. You will buy your books exclusively from Amazon. Amazon also charges a fee for many of it's free downloads. All of those movies and videos are free for one month and then you will buy a subscription to Amazon prime. Free cloud storage up to five gigabytes, then choose a plan. Play your MP3's but plan on buying from Amazon's MP3 music service. If the price of this give away is getting to high, then keep shopping for an alternative.
You Are Still Not Done Giving
To me this is a bit scary. Maybe I'm old fashioned. Maybe I don't trust anybody but what about the Amazon Cloud? This is probably the biggest payback in history for Amazon. The Kindle Fire's web requests are handled by Amazon through their Silk browser. They cache your searches so they can customize results based on your history, about like any other web server. They store your data for up to a month. Think merchant, bank, and online bills. If I trust the privacy policy, then all of this information is safe and not personally identifiable. It's the aggregate of that information that is disturbing. It is the collection of data this device is capable of gathering, including "unique identifiers" that are specific to you and your purchase. (See Amazon MP3 Music Service: Terms of Use) The Amazon cloud player collects information such as; "devices on which you download and use the Application and the Service. For example, this information may include the device type, mobile network connectivity, location of the device, information about when the Software is launched, individual session lengths for use of the Application, or occurrences of technical errors." As a marketing tool Amazon will be able to predict what you want before you know you need it. I'm sure they will let you know with the built in Amazon e-Mail app. In simplest terms, every time your Kindle Fire connects to the web it goes to Amazon first.
Who Should Buy One
If you have been buying Kindle books from Amazon, then you should be given the Kindle Fire for free. You've waited long enough for a color reader with some amenities. If you are a stockholder in Amazon, show your support. Anyone who wants to buy every digital product that can be run on this modified android platform from Amazon should get one. This device is designed to make it easy for you limit your digital selections and if you are completely happy with what Amazon has to offer then by all means get one. All color eBook readers have to sell their own books in a DRM format that satisfies the author and provider, but unlike the Kindle Fire, most are not interested in your every move and the operating system is not designed for keeping you in just one store. Maybe that's the future and Amazon is one step ahead. Maybe there are alternatives that will be cheaper in the long run.
