Appatic

The time has come and Amazon has made their big announcements on the new release for the Kindle Line. One that had a big Punch. The fist behind that big punch now officially unveiled as the Kindle Fire.

Previously i did a post about the at the time yet to be named Kindle Slate, derived from the scoop by +MG Siegler at Techcrunch. And from that post i feel the need to quote the final part of it:

What i do expect is that MG had got the price not entirely right. As in that i think there could be 2 prices:

$150-$199 = Ad Supported / Opted in User Advance Tracking

$250 = No Ads, No Advanced user tracking and an Amazon Prime Subscription.

or if there was meant to be a single price, it will be just $199

The reasons i believe that could be what will happen are:

1 - The hardware is paltry as hell. The cost of making these must not be higher than $75 - $90 bucks. Why the hell are you charging $250 for this thing Amazon, if it is going to be a Amazon content driven Cloud PMP?

2.- Otherwise where is exactly the edge of this against the B&N Nook Color?

3 - Lenovo just announced a quality Android Slate for $199! Amazon could revise the price based on this.

4 - Anticipation of B&N cutting the price of the Nook Color $50 bucks this fall.

5 - $250 is just too much for such a limited device instead of just buying Lenovo's $199 Android Slate that wont have any of the limitations of the Kindle Slate and can also access everything the Kindle Slate will.

And guess what? I was right on the price i set if there was only to be a single price for the Kindle Fire. $199 is what Amazon will be asking for the Kindle Fire.

What i have yet to fully understand is why everyone is acting like if Amazon is going to lose money on the hardware? They are not. Not at all. They went and did some extremely smart cost cutting measures in the way they executed the hardware and software for the Kindle Fire:

1.- They took a ride on poor RIM and scooped up the same hardware company that they had outsourced The Playbook hardware design. Essentially Amazon Outsourced the hardware design of the Kindle Fire on a basis of the Outsourced design of The Playbook. Somebody better call Xzibit.

2.-They took what is considered the most quickly customizable and stable point of Android for Smartphones (2.1) and made it their own by removing everything Google out of it. And since Amazon got their Android App Store. There is nothing Google can do about it.

3.- They took the most widely available internal parts, configured and tuned them.
The result? a $199 Kindle Fire that will be cheap, well performing and even good looking.

But again. Even if they didn't had done what i mention above. How on earth would it be over $199, if the Lenovo A1, that is basically a reiterated Galaxy Tab 1 is also going to be $199? That was my point.

Now, on a quick resume of what Amazon is offering with the Kindle Fire:

A slate that looks like The Playbook -- which looks great actually -- With the internals of a year old high-end Android Smartphone.  Running a remodeled and modded Android 2.1 UI-UX that got many iOS 3.0 inspirations. That will perform great, have a good enough battery life and more importantly will give you access to all of the Amazon content (Kindle Books, Music,Movies, Apps, Magazines,Games) you could possibly need, plus the magic of the real web.

All for $199.

If that is not a winner, then i don't know what else to say. Or what you do think?

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