Amazon Fire Tablet Will Not Compete With iPad But It Will Trouble Google

Amazon Kindle Fire , is an Android based 7″ tablet released by Amazon with the price tag $199. The tablet is no way close to the beauty and performance of iPad but with the price tag of $199 it’s a good deal for the money. Amazon fire is a low end tablet for users who wants to consume content – watch movies, listen to music, read books, play casual games and poke/tweet your friends. Amazon sells loads of content, so offering a tablet at throw away price to it’s consumers to encourage them buy more content is a good business strategy.

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Amazon Kindle Fire is built using Google’s Android OS 2.3, but consumers hardly feel it as a Android tablet as Amazon heavily customized the OS and removed Google branding & applications from it. In technical terms of software development, Amazon fork lifted Android OS 2.3 source code and developed their own operating system. Also Amazon was very clear in branding the tablet to make sure that the brand Android is not used anywhere. Check out the Amazon Kindle Fire TV ad embedded below and no where you hear or see Android.

Apple iPad Untouched By Amazon Kindle Fire

Apple’s iPad is a very powerful tablet with a beautiful design that tempts everyone to at least hold it once in their life time. There is no doubt that everyone lusts for the beauty and power of iPad. On the other hand Amazon Kindle Fire is not a very beautiful device and not powerful too.

Amazon Kindle Fire is targeted for the low budget casual tablets users while Apple iPad is for the users who can spend $500+ for holding a artistic device on their hands. So it’s very clear that Amazon Kindle Fire is no way in competition with iPad.

Amazon Using Android Against Google

Analysts are saying that Android is going to trouble Google. What? Google’s own operating system is damaging their own business! How is that.

Pundits at This is my next says

Amazon now stands poised to take one of Google’s most critical assets – Android – and turn it against them. Praise for the Fire’s deeply-customized version of Android 2.3 has been nearly universal, and make no mistake, there’s no going back; this is Amazon’s operating system now, built atop a road-tested core that Google served up free of charge.

Google spent millions of dollars in developing and testing Android OS. Amazon took the OS, ripped all Google branding and applications out of the OS and using it for their own purpose.

A Guardian article says

The Amazon moves are also a problem for Google. By creating what software developers call a "fork" – a version of the open-source Android that is plainly moving down a different road – Amazon is challenging Google’s primacy with the OS it originally developed. Google cannot be happy about this, but all it can do – until someone hacks the Fire to free it from Amazon’s restrictions – is keep its own apps and app marketplace off the devices, which is counterproductive in its own way. 

Android – Microsoft’s New Cash Cow

Microsoft, another competitor of Google, figured out a way to extract money from Android device makers through the its patent system. Worlds biggest Android device manufacturers HTC & Samsung agreed to pay licenses fee to Microsoft on every Android based device they sell. And many others also agreed to pay in similar way to Microsoft.

Google toils hard to develop Android OS and delivers it at free of cost. It’s competitors figured out a way to make money from Android. Isn’t this a problem to Google?

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