Kindle Fire pre-orders exceeding 2,000 per hour
geek.com
geek.com
That app, when I worked at Amazon, was open to any employee. It would totally suck if they had to restrict access because of some idiot. I always thought it was pretty awesome that I could randomly query all sorts of data at Amazon.
Although leaking the other Kindle data doesn't seem as convenient.
I can't really answer that, but this article is currently #2 here. Can't argue with results, right?
Good luck.
It's similarly ridiculous to expect that orders will "ramp up" as the launch date gets closer. The closer you get to the release date, the less incentive there is to pre-order (because you will be way back in the line anyway) and the more incentive there is to wait a little longer and see the early reviews / user reports. I may be wrong about that but it's not like the reporter provides any support for the assertion that orders will climb as the release date gets close.
It seems unlikely they'll get even 10% of that much attention again before the ship date.
The estimates of how much the Fire cost to make are hugely speculative and do not account for a bunch of other Amazon's costs, such as affiliates marketing. The pricing at $199 means Amazon's goal is to drive volume. The pricing of the $79 standard Kindle means Amazon's goal is to drive EVEN MORE VOLUME. The pricing of $0 for the Kindle reader on the PC, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and browser means Amazon's goal is to drive EVEN MORE VOLUME.
Why? Because they monitize by selling content via their cloud service and by delivering an end-to-end consumer experience across MULTIPLE devices.
Stop focusing on the shiny device. I know it's pretty and you can touch it, but the value proposition has shifted. Devices no longer matter (in relative terms). What matters is how an experience can be delivered ACROSS these entities:
experience = people + devices + services
Even when they released the original Kindle, selling ebooks was clearly the main focus and that turned out quite well for them.
The story is still relevant in that people are buying them at a rapid rate.
Kindle Fire is establishing beachhead for it's bigger 10" sibling who will arrive next year... Fire competes and compares favorably against iPod Touch and not iPad. Next year we'll see a real iPad competitor from Amazon.
If the leak were about Apple, there's a vocal group that would be defending the leakers as doing the right thing, like they did something moral, and decrying Apple's efforts to keep things secret.
With Google, again there seems to be some sense of entitlement to internal Google emails, products and decisions, although the detractors aren't quite as fervent as they are in Google's case.
But Amazon? For some reason everyone seems to be all over whoever leaked this screenshot of an internal tool.
Why the double standard?
As for the numbers themselves, they look positive but not mind-blowing. This probably translates to selling 1M+ at launch, which is a good, solid start. I own an iPad 2 and am tempted to get one of these anyway, just as an impulse buy.
http://ipod.about.com/od/ipadmodelsandterms/f/ipad-sales-to-...
The author doesn't know what revenue really means. Revenue is the total cash taken, not the cash left after paying the manufacturers. He means gross margins, although the 25% GM is dubious.
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Sells-Kin...
p.s. Why do HN readers keep quoting iSuppli as though it's a trusted source? http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/isuppli
The vast majority of the internal tools I've seen have not audited, they are utilities that are built for a specific purpose and it's not anticipated that someone would leak information out of it.
To me, that looks a bit like a SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) report. If so, unless they've gone to great lengths to audit access... it isn't audited and the web server logs aren't going to help.
I'm with enneff on it irking. But at the same time, I would rather occasional disrespectful leaks like this than locked down environments that would prevent whistleblowers exposing the really bad stuff that happens (not in reference to AMZN, just in general).
That's why it irks me personally, not because I care about this data, but because it's irresponsible and disrespectful and helps to bring in the kind of culture that makes it harder for the whistleblowers to operate in when it comes to things that should be leaked.
I've probably phrased the last part of this post appallingly.
Former Amazonian here - Amazon's internal tools are not part of the vast majority, I'll tell you that much. I have no insider information, but it would not surprise me at all if whoever leaked this got a nice chat today.
As far as the market overall, it's effectively untapped at this point. Long term, tablets are going to be the dominant personal computing device. That's a market of, say, 1-2 billion tablets within the next 10 years. Definitely not tapped.
In regards to the tablet market, I'm not sure about 1-2 billion tablet customers. That's 1-2 out of every seven people owning a tablet, which is probably not realistic. I can see an easy 500 million customer in 5 years, which is a very conservative estimate. Whether the trend will continue past 1 billion, though, isn't really predictable right now. If tablet do end up becoming the computers for non-techies, though, then your prediction will probably hold, though it may be more like 15 years.
(a) the Amazon Appstore's guidelines say Android 1.6 and up is supported (with no other qualifications) (b) they have Honeycomb apps in the Appstore
That's a small suggestion that they're looking to keep Android compatibility going forward (otherwise why let in apps that can't run on the Kindle Fire today?). Perhaps they were just trying to not tip their hand, but restricting things to Gingerbread and below doesn't sound that unusual to me.
Where's the click Mr. Peter Demo Man?
A quick search confirms Best Buy list them for instore sale only: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17071&typ...
I believe others are getting them too. Can't recall exactly where I read it.
I doubt that the figures are included in the leaked report, as that speaks of fulfilment centers, which I would understand to be customer fulfilment centers. They're more likely to get X boxes shipped to Best Buy (and whoever) direct from manufacturer to avoid additional shipping costs.
I don't have any reason to believe it is, except that I heard it was the same manufacturer. Is that correct?
I think this has inspired me to start a wall of shame for mobile device sites!
Bluetooth? No
HDMI? No
Camera? No
Microphone? No
micro/SD slot? No
GPS? No
3G? No
Android Market? No (only Amazon Market)Not to say that the Fire is a guaranteed hit, but I think that as a consumption device aimed at consumers it needs very little of those features.
That said, $200 is getting dangerously near the comfort zone for a device purely bought with the intention of using it around the house (where WiFi negates the need for large onboard storage).
To each his own, but I bought the new Kindle for this reason. I own a Kindle Keyboard, but it was just too much -- I just wanted a barebones reader. Even the touch, IMO, is overkill -- who really needs to "touch" what is supposed to be a book? So I picked up the $79 Kindle and was very happy. It's really thin, great aesthetics, and has all the barebone features I need to do one job really well.
if amazon is successfully managing expectations for this product, it has plenty of features. if the fanboys get out of control and oversell it, then it is sorely lacking.
A Kindle Fire, by contrast, puts media front and center right away, and will surely make the store as easily accessible as it is on the e-ink Kindles. It's a Kindle, so right off the bat, you can read books. You get a free trial of Prime, so right off the bat, you can watch video.
Presumably they will make it easy to understand the process for getting your music into the Amazon cloud (or copied on to the device), and I'm sure it won't be too hard to go get hooked up with a copy of Angry Birds, or whatever other games and starter apps they're pushing. And as long as Amazon has a credit card on file for you (pretty likely if you're buying an Amazon tablet), purchasing whatever it is you want will be ridiculously simple, just like on the Kindle.
It should be a fairly batteries-included experience for the vast majority of users right out of the box.
Nilay Patal had a great quote about the Fire v iPad. He said the Fire actually competes with the iPad not because it does more, but because it does less.
Its not a feature war :) I couldn't give a flip about everything you just mentioned. Here's the real test:
Great product: yes
That is all that matters.
HDMI? -- Don't need it, why would I hook my tablet to my TV?
Camera? -- Don't need it, I have a camera and a cell phone.
Microphone? -- Why would I need a microphone on a tablet?
micro/SD slot? -- Don't need it, my content is stored on Amazon's servers. It has enough physical space for content when I'm on the go.
GPS? -- Don't need it, I'm not using this for maps on the go. That's what my cell phone is for.
3G? -- One valid point.
Android Market? -- The most valid point, but not a deal-breaker.
Lists like these are almost always ignorant of typical use cases. That's partly why Apple does so well -- they engineer for the typical use, even if it excludes power users.