Amazon Sets Fire to the Tablet MarketAmazon Sets Fire to the Tablet Market

The Fire is as interesting for what it's missing as it is for what Amazon put in.

Amazon has just set fire to the tablet market, and that has important implications for UC. In a much anticipated announcement, Amazon introduced its first true tablet device, the Android-based Kindle Fire.

While the pre-announcement gossip was that the device would come with a $250 list price, Amazon announced a starting price of $199. That is $300 cheaper than the lowest priced iPad. The 7-inch Samsung Galaxy tablet sells for $300 at Target Direct. As an indication of how the price of electronics has been changing, the original monochrome Kindle was priced at $399 when it was introduced in November 2007.

The Fire is as interesting for what it's missing as it is for what Amazon put in. First, the Fire features a 7-inch rather than a 10-inch screen. The tablet market is divided between 7-inch models like the Cisco Cius and BlackBerry PlayBook, and 10-inch models like the iPad (actually 9.7-inches), the Motorola Xoom, and the much maligned Avaya Desktop Video Device. Samsung makes models in both sizes. Sticking with the basic Kindle form factor, the Fire is a 7-inch device and the only Kindle with a color display. Personally, I like the 7-inch models because you can hold them in one hand, and the display is big enough for me.

With a color screen, Amazon is positioning the Fire as more than just an eBook reader, but decidedly less than most other tablets. The Fire does not have a camera (front- or back-facing), and its communications are Wi-Fi only (802.11 b/g/n). It appears that Amazon took a good look at what people were using tablets for and aimed to deliver those functions at the lowest possible price. Cisco and Avaya are playing up the video capabilities of their tablets, but I've never used the camera on either my iPad 2 or my PlayBook. The current estimate is that 80% to 85% of tablet usage is on Wi-Fi, so forget the 3G.

Tablets are being used as information consumption devices more than anything else (i.e. web surfing, playing games, watching movies, reading emails, etc.), and the Fire looks to deliver that in a "no frills" package. If they got the consumer picture right, Amazon's marketing muscle and content deliver mechanisms could reshape the tablet market in a hurry.

Besides the screen size and the fact that it has 8 GB of memory, the rest of the specs on the Fire are pretty vague. They have not even indicated which Android release version they will be using (most tablets use Android 2.2 or 2.3, and a few use 3.1). We still have concerns about the security capabilities of the Android 2.x releases, so we’re hoping for 3.1.

Not only does the Fire lack a camera, it doesn't have a microphone either, which will limit the communications options available. Cisco and Avaya have both been pushing the idea of tablets for voice and video communications, but the Fire will do neither. How important that will be remains to be seen, but I have a strong feeling that users will stick with something that looks like a phone for voice, and that the tablet will remain primarily an information consumption device.

Android has come to dominate the smartphone market, but it is still a distant second in tablets. According to Strategy Analytics, Apple’s iPad has 69% of the tablet market, and Android has most of the rest. Samsung is currently the biggest Android tablet supplier with a 55% share, though the Fire could knock Samsung off that perch.

The big question is, will people want a tablet without a camera? All of the UC vendors either have or plan to introduce Android clients, and even without a microphone or a camera, a UC client on a $200 device could still be a valuable tool for email, text and presence status. But the user will be grabbing a phone to make a call.