this kindle will fire up the consumer tablet market

I received my kindle fire earlier today and took it for a spin. Here are my initial thoughts...

Think Mass Market
While the relatively low price of the iPad has made it a more approachable consumer device it still starts at $499, and that at least to me is quite a bit of money. $199 is definitely lot less than $499. Right from the moment you receive the kindle fire, you are almost reminded that this is a mass market device, without the bells and whistles. So don't be surprised if it doesn't have all the features that the iPad has; it does seem to have "just enough" features to make it a fairly usable device at that pricepoint.

Think Out of Box Experience
kindle fire shines as a very a simple device and its simplicity is highlighted by how the device is designed and more importantly how the consumer's out of box experience works. The only thing that the user has to do with the fire, is enter their WiFi password. The fire comes preconfigured with your Amazon account and if you have a prime membership, out-of-the-box you can play Amazon Prime Videos. If you have used Amazon App Store for Android on other Android devices, those applications are also instantly available for you to download on your device.

Think Cloud
It is very clear that Amazon created this device to truly a cloud based device. All your apps, music, books are in the cloud and when you need to you get them in your kindle fire. the out-of-box experience coupled with simple software that is built in, makes this transition to the cloud fairly smooth. Of course, you may want to forget storing a bunch of videos on your device, but again, if Amazon can strike the right distribution agreements with the studios, why do you really need to store it there anyway?

Think Small
chances are that if you have been using an iPad or a similar size device, you will find the kindle fire to be quite small. Yes, it has the benefits of being able to slip in a purse or a pocket, it does feel small, at least for web browsing and even some apps. books seemed fine as you should be able to read text on this fairly seemlessly, but if you are considering fire, you are definitely interested in beyond books. For instance, for me, the landscape mod, especially typing was non-usable except for watching videos (more on that later).

Think "Books + Video + Games" and not "Productivity"
I believe kindle fire has a suitable form factor + performance combination for making it into a bit more multi-purpose device. Books render great on the device, videos looked just fine (i only tried Amazon Prime Videos) and some of the games played just fine. While there are some productivity applications on the device, they weren't really optimnal from both a performance perspective as well as IMO, the screen size perspective. For instance QuickOffice HD, the application that allows you to make changes to office docs, worked but i can't seem myself doing a lot of it.

Think Mobile Browsing
On my iPad with some web applications, i have seen that I tend to like normal-web versions, vs. the mobile web variants. This is partly due to the additional real-estate, but also because currently for most sites/portals/apps the mobile web version is really designed for mobile phones and not devices like iPad (there are some exceptions). On the kindle fire though, I believe the mobile browsing context feels just right. For instance, i really enjoyed Facebook's mobile web view on the kindle fire.

and finally,

Think Amazon!
kindle fire IMO will be quite succesful largely because of Amazon and the ecosystem that it brings to the table - kindle books, Amazon Prime and other Videos, Music Library, Amazon App Store and last but not the least the very attractive $199 price. While the kindle fire may look like a Blackberry playbook, this one delivers on promise and more. I believe Amazon can make it work.

So well done, Mr. Jeff Bezos, you have given us a good alternative tablet. it may not be for everyone taste, but it will definitely do fine for many..

iPhone 3GS

Bloomberg has a story about how iPhone 3GS is still selling like hotcakes..

Dropping the price of iPhone 3GS to $0 (after carrier contract) was a very smart business move from Tim Cook. While as this bloomberg article points out iPhone 3GS may be 2 year old phone from a hardware perspective, it still runs their current mobile operating system - iOS 5. So while you may be able to hunt down another $0 Android smartphone deal, it is very likely that it won't be running the latest version of the Android OS

Steve Jobs

After reading the news that Steve Jobs is resigning as the CEO of Apple, saying that I am sad today is an understatement.  I hope that he gets well and gets well soon.

Anyway, if you'll indulge me for a moment, here is what I feel about him..

I love Steve Jobs for all what he has done. While, I wasn't fortunate to live in the times of Einstein or any other science/technology geniuses but I do believe that I am very fortunate to live in Steve Job's era.

The way I look at it, invention and innovation as two aspects in the development of technology, both being very crucial. While invention breaks ground, innovation makes the technology accessible to a large number of consumers. While Steve Jobs (within Apple) may have not invented the computer, the chip or even the touch enabled phone or even a touch enabled computing device/tablet, by putting these things together into something cohesive that works, and works amazingly well, Jobs has truly disrupted the notion of personal computing that himself had conceptualized (IMO, the personal computing area was truly brought to market by Bill Gates and Microsoft).

Clearly the PC era evolved the PC from what Steve Jobs had conceptualized to something that has impacted every aspect of everyday lives. Similar to that I believe always-accessible, simple, touch enabled mobile computing technologies, of which iPhone, iPad and the many similar devices are early implementations, will impact our day to day life’s in more ways than what we have seen so far. The notion of App Stores has already fundamentally changed the notion of how we get new capabilities on consumer devices, and will continue to do so.

For his accomplishments (so far), I believe that he will be remembered as a very important/disruptive figure in the technology evolution. He laid the foundation of two eras of computing, disrupting one of them. Lots of writers are talking about Job's biggest hits etc, but clearly his biggest hit is Apple itself, a company that excels in creation of consumer technologies, bringing different but related/inter-connected disciplines together.

Whether he is the CEO or the Chairman or the "Chief Evangelist" or any other title, I just hope he is doing well or is on a path towards getting better, and continue to do what he does great and clearly loves doing.

One of my biggest hopes is to see him do something "disruptive", something "game-changing" in the field of Education. iPad has provided us some clues, but there is so much more to be done and we need Steve Jobs more than ever...

My thoughts on HP/webOS story ....

Here is what I think...

After acquiring Palm, I think HP made the mistake of launching with a me-2 product, which had no market differentiation from iPad and the Android tablets. IMO, there were two real options that HP should opted for

1. Wait and come back with a killer product
2. (more likely) worked harder to take the cost radically lower

Think about it if webOS Touchpad launched with a $250 price, we would have been looking at a different scenario all together today...

In any case, if I was in HP, I would be thinking hard about coming up with a webOS based ChromeOS like Operating System and notebooks using that OS (which are extremely low cost (think $200-$250 range). 

That segment of the market, IMO is just ripe for some good competition and webOS is well positioned to compete in that...

Thoughts on Google+

So far from what I have seen in Google+, I look it as more of a partial Twitter replacement, to get news, hear opinions etc.

In particular, at least on iPad (or my laptop), I still do love the snapshot view that I get from Twitter, but if Google+ continues to grow adoption and I get Flipboard like clients for Google+, i could see my Twitter usage decreasing..

For personal social networking however, Facebook remains the de-facto. 

I guess the big question naturally is when will Google+ morph into something of personal nature, whenever 90%+ of my "closer friends" use Google+. Facebook Groups provides a very effective way to share between close friends and while Google+ circles could be perhaps used to do the same, it isn't the same and there is really no incentive today to do that. So so far, while I love Google+ and really wish to applaud Google on this development, there is a huge uphill battle and adoption curve to beat if Google wants to influence a lot of users to use Google+ instead of Facebook..

I must say I do enjoy the photo-sharing features a lot...