I disagree. Every time Amazon gets a sentence printed that says the Amazon table is $300 cheaper than the iPad, they win. They want to have them be mentioned in the same comparison, because that encourages the consumer to think "do I really need $300 more of tablet?"
To say this is to ignore the well-established history of retail upselling.
When someone walks into a Best Buy and tells a salesperson "I want to spend $600 on a TV" the standard practice is to show them what they get for $600 and then you show them what more you get if you spend just a bit extra. People often walk out of these stores spending more than intended.
By linking the Fire with the iPad, Amazon is (IMHO) making the same mistake. A consumer will look at the Fire and if the iPad is then on their mind they'll look at it and see what that extra gets them. Not everyone will buy an iPad but some will when they see it plays games, has a richer app experience, has a larger display and so on.
What Apple has mastered is aspirational purchasing. People want to own Apple products. The last thing you should do is remind your potential customers that your product is an inferior (albeit cheaper) version.
Amazon has done one thing right: they haven't created an iPad clone. Don't then lose that advantage by making comparisons.
See what's going to happen is in 6 months there'll quite likely be 9" and/or 10" Fires. They won't be $300 cheaper than the (then) iPad 3. This is where your earlier comparisons come back to haunt you.
> Not everyone will buy an iPad but some will when they see it plays games, has a richer app experience, has a larger display and so on.
The kindle fire can play games and has a rich app experience thanks to android. The only thing the ipad has going for it is the larger display. Time will tell if people care about that.
"The only thing the ipad has going for it is the larger display."
There are a few other key, and important differences other than screen size.
o IOS 4 (and soon 5) - Lots of pre-existing premium apps.
o 8 Gigabytes Flash vs 16 Gigabytes. (I was surprised to see no SD card capability on the Fire. That sucks. I have a 64 GB iPad, and the extra flash makes a difference on long trips when you are watching videos)
o Video/Camera capability on iPad
o 10 Hours Battery on iPad vs 8 Hours on Fire
For a media consumption device that will be used on airplanes, the 20% less battery life (or 25% more on the iPad), and the limited 8 Gigabytes of memory is unfortunate. It's a nice first attempt, but for anyone with the extra money, I think the iPad still offers the better value play - and clearly is the higher quality offering.
The Kindle stores everything in the cloud for free.
> Video/Camera capability on iPad
> 10 Hours Battery on iPad vs 8 Hours on Fire
I see everyone saying here that people don't care about features, they only care about the content, this is why previous Android tablets failed despite having more features than the iPad. Again, I think only time will tell.
> It's a nice first attempt, but for anyone with the extra money, I think the iPad still offers the better value play
But it's $300 more expensive, that's a huge difference for the regular customer. And as I explained, the difference in features isn't that perceivable for non-techies except for the size.
Kindle Fire is built off the Android 2.1 phone OS and lacks the speed improvements of 2.2 and 2.3, as well as the tablet interface elements added in 3.X. I would hesitate to call the compatible Apps in the Amazon Appstore "premium" for those reasons. Games will work comparably, but for anything else people there is distinct difference.
? How does this relate to Samsung? Their related phone and tablet devices are priced nearly identically to Apple's offerings with nearly identical specs.
In the minds of most people, Apple is sexy. They make stylish products that are easy to use. They have sexy stores and enjoyable ads on TV. The high price makes them status symbols. They are massively entrenched and can take advantage of network effects ("all my friends are ipad owners and they love it").
In the face of that, the only rational area to compete in is offering a functionally similar product at a much lower price. But instead of attacking from below and, as the OP said, making consumers question the price tag, Samsung chose to attack from above by matching specs and price point. Riskier move that has now spectacularly failed.
How would Samsung fight on price here? Amazon is using the Fire as a loss leader. They very likely lose money on every sale. But they make it up on extra Amazon conversions. What would Samsung make up their losses on?
The articles are about Samsung's first, 7", Froyo based tab. The 10.1 and 8.9 Honeycomb tabs are selling so well, that they are nowhere in stock (you are given about week delivery time on order). And yes, that's in Europe, German judges have jurisdiction only in Germany, nowhere else.
I think it's a little bit misleading. You can interpret those statements as an attempt to steal iPad's customers or you can interpret those statements as an attempt to attract a new market of consumers that would never buy an iPad because of the price. I like to think it's the latter more than the former.
