Tag: Kindle

Amazon launches its ‘Fire’ smartphone

Amazon announced its first smartphone today, a bold move into a segment currently dominated by Apple and Samsung. At an event in Seattle, CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Fire Phone, a smartphone with a 4.7-in. 3-D display, a 2.2-GHz quadcore processor, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2 GB of RAM.

The device, which has a heavy focus on multimedia, will offer unlimited photo storage and a dedicated button to launch the camera app. It will be sold exclusively on AT&T’s network at a price of $199 for a 32-GB version with a two-year contract or $299 for a 64-GB version. Amazon is also throwing in a free year of Amazon Prime, its customer-loyalty program (existing Prime members will get a bonus year tacked onto their current subscription).

The device is currently available for preorder on Amazon’s website and will begin shipping on July 25.

The new phone is designed to be tightly integrated with Amazon’s myriad services. The company’s Instant Video service will be preinstalled on the device, as will Amazon’s newly launched music-streaming service. The phone will also come with a new program called Firefly, which allows people to scan objects, songs and TV shows (sort of like an all-purpose Shazam app) so that Amazon can identify them and offer a way to purchase them from its store. In total Firefly can recognize 100 million items, Bezos said. “Fire Phone puts everything you love about Amazon in the palm of your hand,” he said in a press release.

The phone’s 3-D capabilities are its most unique feature. Through a technology dubbed Dynamic Perspective, the Fire Phone uses four cameras placed on its front face to track a person’s head movements at all times. This allows the phone to offer a real-time 3-D-like display that presents more depth to images than a typical smartphone screen. During the event, Bezos demonstrated the phone’s map app, which showed looming skyscrapers leaping off the screen, as well as an app that allowed the user to sort through dresses as if they were in an actual 3-D space. The phone’s motion sensors allow users to scroll within certain apps by tilting the device rather than touching the screen.

Like the Kindle, the Fire Phone will run on a modified version of Android and support some apps native to Google’s operating system. Popular apps such as Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, ESPN and HBO Go should be available for the device when it launches. Amazon has also released development tools to allow companies to make apps that make use of Dynamic Perspective and Firefly.

The device demonstrates Amazon’s growing interest in creating hardware. In addition to its popular line of Kindle e-readers and tablets, the company released its first set-top box, the Amazon Fire TV, earlier this year. The company has always been reticent to disclose just how successful its hardware ventures are — Bezos said today that there are “tens of millions” of Kindle owners, and there’s no real data on Fire TV sales — but smartphone sales dwarf those other segments. More than a billion smartphones were shipped globally in 2013, with Samsung and Apple controlling nearly half the market between them.

Amazon will face an uphill battle taking on those two giants, but the company has a history of eschewing profits to smother competitors in other markets. They may be embarking on a similar strategy today — the 32-GB version of the Fire Phone, for instance, will sell for $100 less than a similar model of the iPhone 5S. – Time.com

Tablets to overtake PCs by 2015 as prices plummet

A tablet
A tablet

Tablet prices are plunging amid a flood of new devices and cutthroat competition for market share.

Amazon has slashed prices of its Kindle HD tablets to as low as $169 in the US and 139 pounds in Britain, while Barnes & Noble has cut the price of its Nook to as low as $129, and has announced plans to outsource production of its tablets.

“Since Hewlett-Packard launched its tablet, there has been a lot of pressure on prices,” said Rob Enderle, analyst with Enderle Group.

HP sells its Android-powered seven-inch Slate for as low as $139, helping make the paperback-size tablet computer an affordable commodity.

A Gartner survey suggests tablet sales globally will rise 67.9 percent to 202 million units this year, but analysts say the market is cooling after a couple of years of sizzling growth.

Gartner said the red-hot growth in tablets and smartphones will taper off as these devices gain longer life cycles. The report said many consumers are opting for “basic” tablets to cut costs.

“It looks like the market may be tiring of tablets and as makers get desperate, you may see more pressure on prices,” Enderle said.

Some retailers are selling tablets for less than $100, but Enderle said the flood of poor-quality devices may eventually backfire and turn off consumers.

Jitesh Ubrani, analyst at the research firm IDC, said many of the low-cost tablets come from small, sometimes unbranded “whitebox” vendors.

“The decline of the PC market makes it increasingly important for PC vendors to compete in the tablet space,” Ubrani said

“As more top-tier brands introduce low-cost products, we expect to see a reduction in the number of whitebox vendors.”

Even so, the analyst said, average prices for tablets is likely to drop further, and that tablet shipments are expected to overtake all PC shipments in 2015.”

The market leader, Apple, has so far kept above the fray, keeping prices steady on its iPad line of tablets, although it introduced the lower-cost iPad mini last year at $329, less than the $500 for its full-size iPad.

“Apple does not look at the competitive marketplace to determine its strategy,” said Jeff Orr, analyst with ABI Research. “They look at their buyers. Because of that I would expect their price points to remain consistent for the foreseeable future.”

Enderle said Apple is seeking to remain a “premium vendor” but faces a difficult choice — lowering prices, which can hurt its profits and worsen its share price declines, or giving up market share.

“Under Steve Jobs, when a product started to commoditize, they would come out with something new,” Enderle said. “Apple needs another premium product. It is overdue for whatever the next big thing is.”

Microsoft has also aimed at the high end of the market with its Surface, which debuted with a starting $500 price tag, but it has cut the price as low as $199 for education buyers.

Orr said some of the manufacturers may be forced out of the market if tablets are not part of their “core” business.

“Every brand believes it has an audience which will be interested in their device to connect to their ecosystem,” he said. “The reality is not every player can survive.”

Amazon sells its Kindles near the cost of production, in an effort to direct the buyers to Amazon content and apps. The others, including Apple, Google and Microsoft, also want to keep their customers tethered to an ecosystem for advertising and sales.

But Orr points out “there is none of that brand loyalty that some of these vendors had expected.” For example, an iPad user can still use Google, and Kindle users can buy from non-Amazon sellers.

Enderle noted that Google, which makes a $199 Nexus 7 tablet, “has a subsidized model in which advertising makes up the difference” of any lost profits from the device itself.

But he noted that Barnes & Noble faces an unusual predicament because it is primarily a brick-and-mortar bookseller, and needs to bring customers into its physical stores.

“Every Nook tablet sold causes them to lose a customer who might also go into the store,” he said. “They may need to go fully online and compete with Amazon.”

IDC’s Ubrani said it may be difficult for players like Barnes & Noble to compete with Amazon by subsidizing the tablets.

“Not every tablet vendor can afford to utilize this business model,” he said. “Yes, each can offer movies, music, apps, etc. to help subsidize the tablet, but none have the same scale and product selection that Amazon does.”

Enderle said that even though it seems to be a good time to buy a tablet, he advises people to wait.

“We are just short of a refresh” for many tablet makers, said Enderle. He expects new versions of the iPad, Surface and several Android models. Amazon is also reportedly working on new tablets.

“We will see a raft of new products in August and September,” he said. “Unless you find a really good buy. I would wait.” – AFP