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Kindle Tablet: Firing Up A Retail Engine

[Editor's Note: Now with more news about Amazon offering thousands of ebooks for free to new Kindle Fire users, I'm republishing this piece I wrote in 9/27/11 about how Amazon is taking the gloves off in the Tablet Wars.]

Everyone's excited about Amazon's launch of the Kindle Tablet tomorrow in New York, allegedly to be called the Kindle Fire. It will be an Android-based tablet -- another nudge in the ribs to Apple's iPad and a slight cozying-up to Google. There are all these variables that may help or hinder it from succeeding -- price, apps, hardware considerations, competitors -- but I think there is one big differentiator that makes the other factors unimportant.

I need to go back -- not too far back, but back to the day I got my iPad 2 last spring and the literal moment I started it up and registered it and learned how to use it.

I remember starting up other brand new computers -- both Windows and Apple -- over the years and the basic first steps always had you launching the operating system and connecting with a website. With Windows, you went through a bunch of Microsoft set-up screens and registered with a bunch of www.microsoft.com pages. With MacBook, off to www.apple.com you went.

With the iPad, you started with the iTunes site.

I remember thinking, "Wait, isn't iTunes a place to buy music?" What kind of new computer is this? And it all became obvious suddenly -- this is a platform for retailing. The iPad like no other computing device I'd owned before, was a platform for buying content.

And Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? The fairest retailer -- the most amazing retailer -- the leading edge retailer -- I do think the answer is Amazon.

So if you think the Kindle Fire is going to make it or break it because of Android or email or apps or all these other considerations, I think you are not looking in the right place. Look at that first set-up screen for the iPad -- and that means iTunes -- it's a store and as great a store as it is and as excellent a bunch of tools as Apple makes (and I love my iPad2 and my MacBook Pro) having Amazon as your retailing competition is seriously challenging.

Apple fan boys and girls feel free to disagree but on Wednesday, in New York, Amazon will be launching an ominous retail engine that just happens to be called the Kindle Fire. And it will be a retail engine that makes it easy as pie to buy a lot more than just music or books. And not to be overlooked, it will be very friendly to a massive audience of users who currently don't own an iPad or a Nook or any type of tablet, but love shopping on Amazon and have for years.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia, Amazon (picture of Jeff Bezos)

Amazon Offers Free Ebook Borrowing for Prime Members

Did you read the homepage announcement by Jeff Bezos over at Amazon this morning. It's getting very cool to be an Amazon Prime Member with all the content you can eat heading your way. As I wrote here last month about the new Kindle Fire being the ultimate retail platform, it's all coming true. Hat Tip to Dave Winer for the Twitter update on this.

Dear Customers,

Today we're announcing a new benefit for Kindle owners with an Amazon Prime membership: the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

Kindle owners can now choose from thousands of books to borrow for free, including over 100 current and former New York Times Bestsellers — as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates. No other e-reader or ebook store offers such a service.

The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library features a wide array of popular titles, including Water for Elephants, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, and Fast Food Nation – plus award-winning novels such as The Finkler Question, motivational books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, biographies and memoirs including Kitchen Confidential, and Pulitzer Prize-winning books like Guns, Germs, and Steel.

We’re adding the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to Prime membership at no extra cost — Amazon Prime remains just $79 a year, which gives you free two-day shipping on millions of products, plus unlimited instant streaming of almost 13,000 movies and TV shows.