Why the Amazon Kindle Tablet Won’t Kill the iPad

Amazon’s upcoming Kindle tablet appears to have it made. It’s got stylish new looks, and an online app market with thousands of titles already — to say nothing of the millions of books, songs and movies in Amazon’s store.

Even with the existing Amazon.com stores and services, though, it probably won’t beat Apple’s iPad 2. In fact, they’re not even competing with each other. Here’s why!

1. Different Prices

Apple’s iPad 2 tablet starts at $499, for the lowest-grade model with 16 GBs of flash memory and only Wi-Fi for wireless Internet. The Amazon Kindle tablet, on the other hand, has been reported to start at $249, roughly the same as an existing high-end Kindle … or the Barnes and Noble Nook Color, a multitouch color e-reader tablet it will closely resemble.

At first glance, it seems like Amazon’s undercutting Apple. Who’d pay twice as much as they have to for a tablet? But the Kindle tablet will also be half the size, and will lack many features the iPad (or other Android tablets) have. In PC terms, the iPad’s equivalent to a full-sized laptop computer, while the Kindle will be more like a budget netbook.

But even that’s not really a fair comparison, because the two are designed for …

2. Different Audiences

The iPad’s not just a tablet, it’s an iPad. It’s the must-have gadget of this side of the century, the same way the personal computer was a decade or two ago. Just about everyone wants it, and just about everyone who has one loves it, and is starting to use it for more and more things that you used to need a computer for.

Android tablets are failing miserably because they’re trying to be the iPad. It’s not even close (and don’t get me started about the PlayBook or TouchPad).

The Kindle tablet, on the other hand, isn’t trying to be the iPad so much as it’s trying to be a better Kindle. It’s going to be marketed to book readers, and to everyone shopping for books on Amazon.com. If it’s going to compete with anything, it’ll be competing with the Nook Color, since they’re both half-sized e-reader tablets with web browsing and apps. They’re not going to replace the iPad for anybody who wants one, but they just might be enough for someone who wants the best e-reader ever.

3. Different uses

What do you do with a Kindle? You read books on it. You’ll be able to use it for other things, of course, but that’s what a lot of people are going to buy it for.

The Upshot

It’s possible that the Kindle tablet will end up undercutting the iPad, the way netbooks did in fact slow full-sized laptop sales for awhile. With the iPad’s incredible momentum, though, it seems unlikely.

The tablet market seems hungry for well-designed tablets. If the Kindle tablet fits the bill, it may well succeed without “killing” anything.


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