Motorola's Android Tablet : Focus On TV (Apple, Amazon, Others Watching)

Motorola and Android have already met, but Motorola and tablets are a new item.

The 10 inch screen device would be bundled with Verizon FiOS TV (pay-TV) service, which makes perfect sense. Much more sense than say Nokia, to name a fabled marketing counter-example... Let's see how rivals will move, for instance how Samsung will position its own Android tablet, smaller in size but with a screen of potentially much better quality, and a better grasp at personal computing.

But this is first about entertainment, and Verizon takes and interesting shot in the convergence barnum. Most quadplay operators across the World have necessarily been, if not working on, at least thinking about a "tabletish" gizmo to complete the set of home / away screens, and if people start (for instance) massively and legally downloading and watching movies with an Android 3.0 / 3G ticket on their tablet this November, xmas season looks fine...

Except maybe for Amazon : expect even more push marketing until then... unless of course Jeff Bezos manages to stevejobs a new Kindle feature high up into the buzzosphere.


mot-bile 2010

Woot flows with the Amazon

In his own words*, Woot CEO Matt Rutledge announced the agreement between his hot sales website and Amazon.com. The Woot brand shall survive like today : barely Audible, but with a music of its own.

Barely Audible ? I wouldn't be surprised to see Jeff Bezos use a loudspeaker for that one on social networking sites.

mot-bile 2010


* see "Amazon, Woot, and You: But Mostly Woot", following an email stating "BREAKING: Woot To Be Acquired By Amazon, Then Left To Amuse Ourselves - Holy crap! Woot has signed an agreement with Amazon - yes, the Amazon - to become an independent subsidiary of the ecommerce colossus. Woot HQ will remain in Carrollton, Texas, and will operate as autonomously as other Amazon companies like Zappos and Audible. Visit the blog for our usual snarky commentary and tell us what you think. - Woot" (NB at this stage, nothing about the deal on Amazon.com's corporate website)

Kindle 2 v. Print

Kindle has grown up since November 2007 (see "Kindle Kindle little star - take my Word"), carving itself not only a sweet spot in the e-book market, but a new market altogether.

Oprah provided a major boost last autumn but unlike Obama, Amazon couldn't deliver the goods all the way, missing a major holiday season. Jeff Bezos introduced yesterday the much anticipated 2.0 version : same buckled-up business model, same price ($359), but Kindle is now slenderer than an iPhone, it can synchronize with other devices, and it can read (text-to-speech features).

There's much talk about competition with other devices (from Apple to Sony, from handsets to notebooks...), or multidevice text delivery platforms (ie shortcovers, launching later this month), but less about coopetition with content providers at a time when most newspapers are struggling. Many closed shops, others give up printing (ie The Christian Science Monitor didn't even wait for Election Day), others try repositioning while downsizing (ie Newsweek). Did I notice that Kindle added more shades of grey, to enhance the reading experience when you come across a picture or say an ad ?

Amazon is revisiting its relationships with key partners as well as with prosumers, inviting users to submit video comments, joining the self-publishing wave with an improved Digital Text Platform that will benefit both the company beyond the Kindle...

Like Google, Amazon can leverage on a killer combo of comprehensive customer knowledge management and key monetizing tools (AdSense, online sales).

Kindle Kindle little star - take my Word

The first of its Kindle ? Over the past decade, we've seen much nicer ebook readers than Amazon's ugly $399 gizmo. The size, weight, shape, vertical scrolling, the next / previous page system, the keyboard, or E Ink are cool, but Kindle is definitely not meant for LG Shine nor iPhone lovers - even though one may find a couple of book readers* among those.

And anyway, the aim of the game is not to propose the sexiest device but to set the standards for ebooks. Beyond hardware, this is about softwares, formats, DRM... and sustainable business models.

And this is truly wireless. Not Wifi but CDMA2000-EVDO (as usual, Sprint Nextel provides the radio for a new disruptive player). But the customer won't be charged for airtime.

This is not a phone but a reader with a restricted connectivity : the main revenues are supposed to be books. A New York Times Best Seller or New Release will sell for $9.99, and overall, there are over 88,000 books available in the Kindle Store (amazon.com/kindle). And Amazon has already been a 99¢ store for paperless short stories for over two years**.

Compulsive readers could help Jeff Bezos break even, but he still needs to make sure all buyers will actually use the device on a regular basis. Usages that bring the dough, not like reading on and on the same thing (including The New Oxford American Dictionary included in the purchase).

Well. This reader has a rather restricted connectivity (dubbed "Whispernet"), and the only way to read something that wasn't imbedded is to access or download it over the air. Amazon offers all you can read Wikipedia.org, and you can browse for hours the store - no doubt other things can be ordered this way, but no card reader for book readers, and the capacity is limited to 200 titles (500 to 800 k files). AmazonKindle kindly declines files that are neither Word documents, nor pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG), nor HTML, nor TXT.

You can download such files through a personal kindle e-mail at the rate of $0.1 each. That's a start. You can subscribe to blogs and news services from $.99 / month each. That's getting juicy. And Amazon can bring partners or open the web step by step and cent by cent as they please. That's smart to start from such a low point, but I'm not sure everybody will follow all the way.

Whatever. The proof of concept would help Amazon export this service to all other devices. And turn 3G handsets and PMPs into even more multimedia players***. Come on. You don't need 3G just for a 500 to 800k file every other month.

* I mean actual books, not the Bridget Jones / Devil wears Prada / Shopaholic series.
** see "Google Mob (pay .99 for the unshorted version)" (20050823)
*** after all, you can already use your PDA or iPod or iPhone as a sort of ebook