The majority of articles about Android all seem to start with the same statistic: About 1 in 2 of the world’s smartphones currently run Android. That’s impressive, especially since Android has only been around for 3 years. It seems that the world has gone gaga for Google’s little green robot, but while Android is clearly dominating global smartphone sales, the same thing cannot be said with regards to tablets.
One of the main reasons for this is the iPad, a product manufactured by a company so obsessed with quality and so vertically integrated, that it’s able to outshine all of its competitors on almost every level, including price. And let’s not even talk about the quality of its app store or the fact that it also happens to offer a convenient way to buy music, movies, magazines, newspapers and books that can be easily downloaded directly to your device.
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But the success of the iPad did not deter companies like Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Sony and others from developing tablets that all tried to do the same thing: out-iPad the iPad. Of course none of them were able to succeed, at least not on all fronts.
Make no mistake — there are plenty of impressive Android tablets that are currently available, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Asus Transformer. But up until now, no one has been able to offer consumers Apple’s unique mix of user experience, ease of use, value and quality content. That is, until Amazon.
As the title of this article suggests, Amazon is planning on releasing an Andorid-based tabled device that aims to incorporate all of its cloud-based services. According to Techcrunch, this Kindle-branded tablet will be a 7-inch device with a capacitive multi-touch touchscreen that should be ready for release before Christmas later this year. The device will run a forked version of Android that will be redesigned from the ground up by Amazon’s UI team in order to better integrate with Amazon’s existing ecosystem.
The Kindle Tablet offers Amazon the opportunity to take a page out of Apple’s book and gain tighter control over both hardware and software. It’s safe to say that the Kindle Tablet will come preloaded with the Kindle app, the Amazon App Store along with its free app of the day offer as well as Amazon’s Cloud Player and Instant Video Player for buying and streaming all of your music and movies — although you will probably only be able to buy music and movies if you live in the US.
Prominent placement of the Kindle Tablet on Amazon’s website probably won’t hurt initial sales and the company’s brilliant customer service will ensure that any problems users have with the device will be solved quickly. And best of all, sources suggest that the Kindle Tablet will be highly subsidized, costing around $250 dollars — half the price of an entry-level iPad. The US$250 dollar price tag reportedly includes a free subscription to Amazon Prime which usually costs US$79 a year.
With all things considered, the Amazon Tablet could be a device that clearly stands out from its competitors — proving that sometimes the best way to stand out is to actually do something different. When it’s released, it probably won’t resemble any other Android-based tablet, except maybe Barnes & Noble’s Nook Colour. It definitely won’t be another tablet trying to be the iPad. In fact it might be something so different from the iPad that comparing the two might seem ike comparing Apples and oranges. But the one the one thing the Kindle Tablet could potentially be is amazing.
