Day 38 of 1000
I LOVE my Barnes and Noble Nook Color. It is easy to read, easy to program, easy to buy books, easy, easy, easy. It is not perfect. Email and web browsing is not particularly convenient. Still, I have found that my Nook Color is perfect for my treadmill time and walks in the neighborhood. It was, by far, the best Android Tablet deal on the market when I bought it this summer for $249 in Oregon (No sales tax!). I really want to support Barnes and Noble, too. It has been suggested that Barnes and Noble is our only hope as a national, bricks and mortar bookstore chain, so I want to buy my eBooks from them.
Amazon is making that a lot harder. Their new Kindle Fire is very close to the same size as the Nook Color, but with a lower price ($199) and a better processor. It does not appear to be jail broken yet, but it was just announced yesterday and will not start shipping to customers until November. It runs Android, so I assume it is just a matter of time before lots of people will be programming this thing. I have buddies inside the development effort at Amazon, have actually had a phone interview with some of the people who develop this device, and know they have staffed up to own this market. They have thrown a ton of resources at this product line. Those resources include some very good developers, some of them with skills to develop things that are not already in the Kindle Fire. I am a vision engineer and work with cameras. The kinds of people I know who work at Kindle have complementary skill sets. That the Kindle Fire does not have any cameras was a little bit of a surprise to me given what I know about who is working there. Could a camera enabled Amazon tablet with new and innovative functionality be on the drawing board. I am pretty suspicious.
This is going to force the hands of both Barnes and Noble and Apple. Both of them have a lot to lose if this Kindle Fire is a success. Barnes and Noble for the previously stated reasons and Apple because Amazon has a lot more and a lot better stuff to sell on their tablet than is available for the iPad. That is especially true as more capable tablets continue to roll out from Amazon with cameras and other interesting sensing and input devices.