The new tablet will be sold only 199 Amazon dollars. A feat in a market dominated by the iPad, much more expensive, which is due to technical choices reasoned, compressed margins and some tricks. Since the presentation of the tablet from Amazon on Wednesday night, no one talking about it: price, so aggressive. At $ 199, Kindle the Fire will be 60% cheaper than the first of the iPad, sold to 499 dollars (489 euros in France). If the surprise is - analysts had expected, at best, at a rate of $ 249 - Tablet Amazon profits actually a series of well thought out choices that contribute to get its costs down without crop quality.
• A free Android system. Kindle the Fire is powered by the Android system (version 2.3). Amazon, however, erased the references to Google and transformed ergonomics. The contents are displayed in an elegant carousel, for easy access to books, magazines and films, television series, as well as applications, distributed in a special shop. Well thought out, the Internet browser "Silk", once again developed specifically for the tablet, displays pages very quickly in the preloading on the Amazon servers. Other tablets Android entry-level, as Arnove Archos 8 (150 euro), do not benefit from these enhancements.
• A 7-inch format, more economical. On an iPad, the touch screen of 9.7 inches is the most expensive ($ 127 alone, as estimated by iSuppli). By choosing a diagonal 7 inches, 7 inches shorter, Amazon has lowered its costs. The screen is excellent, however: the IPS technology provides good visibility regardless of the angle of view and 1024x600 resolution at 169 pixels per inch is even better than the iPad (132 dpi). At the same price, the Archos tablet 70 has a resolution of 800x480. The Acer Iconia Tab A100 and BlackBerry PlayBook, comparable to the screens, cost 100 euros more.
• Just the basic functions. Memory is the second most expensive component of a tablet. Kindle the Fire has 8 GB of storage, two times less than the first iPad. It's enough to hold 10 movies, 800 songs or 6000 Ebooks, and 80 applications, Amazon said. No excess of power there either: the double-heart OMAP processor from Texas Instruments 4 is sufficient to ensure smooth navigation, according to preliminary tests. Connectivity, the Kindle Fire keeps only the necessities: a headphone jack and a USB 2.0 port. Equipped with WiFi, it doesn't embark (load) 3G or Bluetooth, or GPS, or camera or accelerometer.
• A margin sacrificed. Other Tablets are very close to the characteristics, such as Nook Color Barnes & Noble, do not descend below 250 dollars. The price of the Kindle Fire was probably fixed "at the expense of margins," Judge Mark Mahaney of Citigroup. To go through quickly on a highly competitive market, Amazon could have chosen to lose $ 50 per tablet, according to an estimate by Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. The success of the late HP TouchPad, past $ 99 after stopping its production, has shown strong appetite for the shelves of good quality but cheaper. We are far from Apple, which still realize a comfortable 30% gross margin on its iPad, says Gene Munster.
• Additional revenue through content. As the iPad, related to iTunes and AppStore, Kindle the Fire has all the content download services from Amazon. According to Fred Moran, an analyst at Benchmark Company, Amazon "subsidizes the cost" of the tablet to draw customers to the annual subscription to a premium download service, sold $ 79 per year. A one-month subscription will be granted even for free when buying the Kindle Fire, to give taste. This strategy is reminiscent of the manufacturers of video game consoles ready to sell a console at a loss before they catch up on games. These choices have already won over analysts, who praise the aggressive pricing of the company of Jeff Bezos. Wednesday, Amazon action ended up 2.4%. "At $ 199, Kindle the Fire can disrupt the market, especially outside iPad. Other sellers of tablets will be difficult to match the Amazon price level, "says the bank UBS in a note. According to Gene Munster, the market share of the iPad would fall from 90% today to 60% in 2012. And Amazon would become the first vendor tablets Android. Kindle the Fire will be sold from November 15 in the United States. French release date is not yet known.
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