• MOST READ

• LATEST NEWS

One of the major stories of the holiday season, of course, was the success of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, which finally introduced a second major slate player into the sector, albeit with a very different offering to the iPad. Amazon, whose $199 Fire mainly exists to boost its content and cloud service sales, will be looking to broaden that model further, and some analysts expect it to license its software platform to less successful tablet makers in a potent challenge to Google's role as primary apps/content provider for Android.

Simple, touch-based access to video, apps and other stores, plus attractive content bundling deals, have helped make the Fire an overnight success. As Sarah Rotman Epps of Forrester Research told CNET, Amazon has proven a model which others will have to emulate, or fail in the tablet segment. "Devices need to lead with content services or they're dead in the water," she said. "By next summer we'll have had several months of Amazon demonstrating that a successful consumer electronics product strategy has to lead with content services."

Sony has also touted this approach, boasting its rich stores of content in support of its two tablet launches, but it has been less slick in execution than Amazon, and has already slashed $100 off the price of its Tablet S in the US.

By contrast, Amazon is not, at heart, a hardware maker and may look to offer its platform to some of these less successful slate makers, according to Richard Windsor, global technology analyst at Nomura Securities. He sees a day when firms like HTC could tap into the Amazon cloud and content offerings, with the retail giant possibly stepping back from own-branded gadgets - provided it retained some control of the user experience, especially for content purchasing. This is where the challenge to Google, also keen to unify the Android cloud user experience in its own image, would arise.

I'm not convinced Amazon's going to stay in the hardware business very long. Look at their business model - they are selling this thing at cost in order to make money on content. So if you can get someone else to make the tablet for you and sell it with your user experience on it, what do you care?" Windsor told CNet, which cites observers who expect to see co-branded approaches, such as 'HTC Dream Kindle' or 'Kindle Fire by HTC'.

They point to Amazon's success in launching an alternative Android app store to that of Google, and the failure of any tablet with native access to the Google Android Market to make a major splash - by contrast with those boasting their own, highly integrated content experiences, such as iPad, Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.

Related Stories

COMMENTS

No comments yet. Be the first to add a comment!

Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...

Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...