A Few Words about the Kindle Fire

In my opinion, the Kindle Fire is a classic case of “hit ‘em where they ain’t”. The price point of $199 and the size factor make it plain you have an alternative to the Wi-Fi 16 GB, particularly if you want to think of your tablet as a service like a cell-phone or ISP. You often get a discount on a cell-phone when you buy a mobile phone contract. My Wi-Fi equipped router came free from AT&T. I expect that AT&T has made up for the cost of the router through charges on my phone/TV/Internet bill.

So I would expect the same with the Kindle Fire. Amazon will sell it to you at a very nice price for you to consume entertainment with it. You would get TV and movies through Amazon Prime. You get a free deal on Amazon Prime with the initial purchase, just like the free deals with premium TV. You would buy music through Amazon MP3. Amazon would offer you books and magazines. You could also shop for other merchandise through Amazon.

Amazon, of course, would recoup the cost of the Kindle Fire through your purchases.

Amazon’s use of its cloud servers strikes me as the most interesting part. The Kindle Fire only comes with 8GB of storage. You would store your music and books and magazines in the cloud, and you would rent your own little piece of it from Amazon. Cha-ching!

To make use of the cloud, Amazon expects that you would stay in proximity to pervasive Wi-Fi.

Amazon’s interface differs from other Android tablets. So far, I’ve read positive reviews of this interface, based on what reporters at Amazon’s New York press conference saw. They didn’t get to touch. It’s like Fashion Week, gawk at the models all you want, photograph them, too; but you don’t get to take one home.

Amazon will release it on November 15^th. So I’m waiting for the reviews and for the chance to touch one at Staples.

But I’m still budgeting for an iPad next year.