Amazon's New Kindle Fire

Instead of repeating what you’ve already read elsewhere, I’ll assume you’ve all read Marco Arment’s take on the Kindle Fire.

The new Amazon Kindle Fire is nothing of a surprise for anyone following tech news, apart its price, considerably lower than expected.

How’s the market today?

As Marco has put it, there’s currently an iPad market, not a tablet market. No competitor has been able to grab a significant share of the market, and Apple is still enjoying the biggest share of the cake. Every big player in the smartphone market has tried, and failed. I had high hopes about a webOS tablet, but HP has killed it. Microsoft could really make the difference, but it looks like it doesn’t dare make the shift towards Metro for its upcoming OS for tablets, Windows 8.

Let’s face it: Apple had the best possible move, following what we call a blue ocean strategy: it had absolutely no competitor, no existing market nor demand. Apple has created the tablets category from scratch, defining its very bounds and setting the expectations. Its competitors already had a 12-month technical delay, and simply couldn’t keep up. Not to mention the actual technological advance Apple has.

To put it simply, there’s Apple and there’s the rest, sharing the few pieces left.

So, who’s this tablet for?

While Apple has been free to define the market, there will always be consumers that do not see the need for a tablet, or that cannot justify the purchase. The iPad is, and will probably stay, a higher-market product. However low the price Apple could actually sell its tablet, it’ll always be considered as such by the consumers.

To sum it up a bit, Apple is controlling the enormous share of a market with a product many consider overpriced. (These people really don’t know what they’re missing, do they?) What’s left of this market, then?

That’s where the Kindle Fire comes in: it is an aggressively low priced device with a massive media offering through Amazon’s existing services. Let us not forget that the others have failed not because of crappy hardware and/or software, but because of a poor, if any, media offering. While I consider that tablets have erroneously been touted “media consumption devices”, many people do think it’s true. And how good is a tablet if there is no easy way to consume media on it? (Try to buy and watch a movie on a PlayBook or on a Galaxy Tab.)

Amazon owns and control a massive media platform, spanning from ebooks to movie streaming through audiobooks and music. With the Fire, they have done just that: a media consumption device. On the Fire, it’s easy to find, buy and read ebooks, as well as to find and buy and stream movies. You get the picture.

It’s clear that the Kindle Fire will be a tremendous success. With a price this low, it may actually interest the same people that saw no use in an iPad or that found it too expensive. “Surely, at $200, it must be a great deal. That’s half an iPad’s price.”

Should Apple be afraid of this newcomer? Of course it should. One should never sit on his laurels. Will it hurt Apple’s business? Not at all. Everyone knows the iPad’s the best. The few that don’t see the use or find it overpriced will probably never buy an iPad anyway. They might go with an Kindle Fire instead.

Will it hurt RIM’s and Samsung’s and other Android makers’ business? Yes, it will crush them.