Tablet wars might take off yet again as Amazon is set to unveil its tablet this week, precisely on the 28th September. Analysts say that it has the potential to be a strong competitor to the tablet giant, iPad as it has a lot on the offering, apart from floating over the Android OS. Wednesday, there is a press conference being held by Amazon in New York and has invited media too for the conference. However, it declined to provide further details.
Amazon had introduced an ‘Amazon App Store’, which was an app store for android apps earlier and many then had even forcasted that a tablet from the world’s largest Internet retailer was coming sooner or later. Now, as the Amazon tablet news is making rounds, analysts are confident that Amazon is introducing its long-awaited tablet computer this year with a view to popularize its name in mobile commerce. Along with this new introduction, they would even concentrate their focus on selling more of the digital goods and services.
Looking at the point of view of the consumers, there is more to rejoice, than to worry about. The reason here is that Amazon would most probably fit in as many services as it can from its end, which would do good for an overall prospective of the buyers, may it be with its app store or easing its way for Amazon tablet owners.
However, for the shareholders, there might be a gloomy figure. BGC partners analyst Colin Gillis told Reuters that as Amazon is working hard to penetrate the tablet world, it is expected to give its tablet owners a number of concessions from the start, which includes pricing the tablet at a price which would be quite aggressive. This would attract many a users to wait and buy Amazon tablets for a price which would be half of its competing tablets.
Gillis however had thoughts that Amazon would be a strong competitor to iPad, which has sold about 29 million devices since its launched in April 2010. he even quoted Wednesday to be tablet day.
There were quite a different views even on this strategy of Amazon as James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research, was of the view that Amazon’s main aim here was to see cloud services as he said, “It’s a marketing tool to build a relationship with customers and sell them cloud (computing) services.” Robert Baird & Co analyst Colin Sebastian on the other hand was of the view that Amazon tablet would be a “game-changer.” He went further noting that this tablet could have sales on around 3 million in its first year.
Amazon has kept its Tablet news in cover for long, but MG Siegler of TechCrunch had noted earlier this month that the tablet from Amazon would yet be named Kindle and its 7 inch device with a full color, touch screen. For the operating system, it would be running on Google’s Android. The cost would be around $US250.
A point to note here is that Amazon tablet is compared to iPad only and not with the other Android tablets available all over the world. Samsung and HTC tablets are making iPad owners jealous all over the world. This again routes the fight between Apple and Google.