That is apparently about to change, according to Amazon.com, which has posted two different images hinting that “Wizardry is on the way.”

In one of the images, there is a picture of an owl, similar to Hedwig, Harry Potter’s loyal companion and courier. In another — found at the top of the Kindle eBook store — it restates that “Wizardry is on the way.”

An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment, saying, “We’ll have to ask you to stay tuned for an upcoming announcement.”

Update: Amazon has officially announced that starting June 19, all seven Harry Potter books (in five languages) will be added to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. Members of Amazon Prime will be able to borrow the books for free.

Presumably, there is still pent-up demand for the electronic copies since the bestsellers have not yet been for sale directly on Amazon or the Kindle.

In March, Amazon announced that all seven of the books would become available, but that consumers would have to buy them directly from J.K. Rowling’s online bookstore called Pottermore and then download them to their e-reader. Despite the inconvenience, Pottermore sold more than £1 million worth  (roughly $1.6 million) of e-books in three days.

Because they were being distributed directly from Pottermore to customers, the Harry Potter series has never appeared on the Muggle bestseller list — I mean, Kindle.

Instead, the Burlingame, Calif., company was going to focus on building games for smartphones.

Now CrowdStar, known for titles such as Top Girl, Social Girl and Modern Girl, is announcing that it has raised $11.5 million in a second round of funding to fuel its mobile ambitions.

Investors in CrowdStar’s second round are Time Warner, Intel Capital, YouWeb, The9 and NV investments. To date, the company has raised $35 million in capital.

With the new funding, the company said it plans to pursue mobile games targeting the female audience and focusing on shopping and fashion. The games will be distributed using Facebook’s social graph, the Gree social gaming network and Apple’s Game Center.

“This funding round validates our pivot to mobile social games,” Relan said in a release. “We’re going for a bigger market with lower production and acquisition costs compared to social games on the web.”

This summer, CrowdStar will launch a brand-new Girl franchise game on Gree’s emerging mobile social network. Just yesterday, Gree announced it had acquired mobile social game maker Funzio for $210 million, showing its committment to signing up new games to the network. CrowdStar is also distributing games on Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

And, as you can see from the screenshot at left, Target has already pulled the Kindle from its Web site.

“Target is phasing out Amazon- and Kindle-branded products in the spring of 2012,” the retailer said in a statement. “We will continue to offer our guests a full assortment of e-readers and supporting accessories.”

It’s not yet clear why Target is ditching Kindle, though The Verge, which broke the story, claims the reason is a “conflict of interest.” And that could be any number of things: A contract negotiation gone bad, Target’s decision to open iPad-peddling Apple mini-stores at a few dozen of its locations, or the growing retail rivalry between the two companies. Remember, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is very tightly integrated with the company’s vast online retail store, which competes directly with Target and has a penchant for undercutting the prices of traditional retailers.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment.

Redmond will put $300 million into the new business at a $1.7 billion valuation, and will get 17.6 percent of the new company. That will leave Barnes & Noble with a stake in the new unit worth about $1.4 billion.

That’s nearly $600 million more than the value the market placed on all of Barnes & Noble until today. Not surprisingly, Barnes & Noble investors love this idea, and are bidding up the stock a staggering 80 percent this morning.

(Update: For now, this isn’t a formal spinoff, and the new unit will remain a Barnes & Noble subsidiary. It’s reasonable to assume that Barnes & Noble and Microsoft will attempt to formally cleave the digital unit into a standalone company down the road, though the release announcing the deal includes plenty of hedging language in case that doesn’t happen: “The company intends to explore all alternatives for how a strategic separation of Newco may occur. There can be no assurance that the review will result in a strategic separation or the creation of a stand-alone public company, and there is no set timetable for this review.”)

A few details:

• The new company will also include Barnes & Noble’s college book-selling unit.
• Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 OS will now include a Nook app.
• The deal includes a settlement to a patent battle between the two companies. It’s worth noting that the Nook runs on a “forked” version of Google’s Android mobile operating system.

The deal is a bit of a magic trick for Barnes & Noble, which will manage to extract an extraordinary amount of value from a business that didn’t exist a few years ago — and will now have a currency to help it compete for Silicon Valley talent.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, which had completely ceded the e-reader market to Amazon, Apple and everyone else, gets into the business via a very small investment.

After market close, the e-commerce giant turned a massive beat: Earnings of 28 cents on revenue of $13.2 billion. Operating income fell 40 percent to $192 million, suggesting an operating margin of about 1.5 percent for the quarter.

Analysts had expected the e-commerce giant to report earnings of 6 cents per share on revenue of $12.9 billion.

A big beat, and Amazon shares are spiking in after-hours trading.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was typically ebullient in the company’s earnings release, rejoicing over Kindle Store exclusives and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. But, also typically, neither he nor the company offered hard numbers on Kindle sales for the quarter.

“Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world by far,” Bezos said. “I assure you we’ll keep working hard so that the Kindle Store remains yet another reason to buy a Kindle!”

Look, if it’s “the bestselling e-reader in the world by far,” then how about showing us some numbers?

Anyway …

Looking ahead, the company said it expects second quarter revenue of $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion.

A couple details worth noting:

• Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product Amazon offers.
• 9 out of 10 top sellers on Amazon.com were digital products, I.E.: Kindle, Kindle books, movies, music and apps
• Worldwide Media sales grew 19 percent to $4.71 billion.
• North American sales were $7.43 billion, up 36 percent from the year prior.
• International sales hit $5.76 billion, up 31 percent from first quarter 2011.

Wearables have enormous potential for uses in health and fitness, navigation, social networking, commerce, and media. Imagine videogames that happen in real space. Or glasses that remind you of a colleague’s name that you really should know. Or paying for a coffee at Starbucks with your watch instead of your phone. Wearables will transform our lives in numerous ways, trivial and substantial, that we are just starting to imagine.

So what will it take to elevate these accessories from niche to mainstream? Hardware advances in battery life and the way sensors interact with each other will get us further than we are today, but the software platforms that drive the hardware hold the key to consumer adoption. In the same way that Windows took the PC mainstream and iOS and Android are powering the smartphone revolution today, wearables’ success depends on backing from one or more of the big five software platforms — Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. These platforms — and their developer communities — hold the key to the consumer connection. How so?

Apple has the most polished marketing, channel and brand. More than any other company, Apple has the potential to make any product go mainstream (witness the iPad). Apple’s expertise in hardware manufacturing, its developer network, its marketing prowess and its channel strength in Apple Stores and partner retailers all add up to a fertile petri dish for wearables. Already, Apple has inspired a number of “app-cessories” built to sync with iOS devices, like the Lark sleep sensor wristband and the (now discontinued) Jawbone UP fitness wristband.

Google has an open platform and a license to dabble. Google’s Android is the platform of choice for WIMM Labs, the Sony SmartWatch and others because it’s open: Product strategists can build whatever products they want on top of Google’s code while still taking advantage of the growing number of developers and companies that build Android apps. Additionally, Google has crucial elements of search infrastructure, with the ability to recognize and retrieve vast amounts of information like location-based data, which could be the basis for many wearable device features.

Microsoft has the best depth sensor yet. Windows Embedded, Microsoft’s operating systems and related solutions for “intelligent systems,” powers a wide range of products from Ford’s Sync automobile information system to Polycom conference phones. But to date, these solutions have been geared more for enterprise use, and haven’t attracted the same breadth of professional and amateur developers that iOS and Android platforms have — a crucial component for taking wearables mainstream. But another Microsoft product, the Kinect for Xbox 360, has captured developers’ imaginations, prompting a Kinect application programming interface for Windows. The potential of a Microsoft powered wearable becomes much more tangible when you imagine the depth sensor of the Kinect turned outward from your body, toward the world rather than toward you.

Amazon has information on more than 100 million products and their buyers. More and more consumers are starting their product searches with Amazon. Its all-encompassing product catalog, detailed product specs and reviews and personalized recommendations would all be assets in wearables. But despite Amazon’s success in manufacturing the Kindle line, we think it’s more likely that Amazon’s wearables strategy will center on distributing apps for other companies’ devices, rather than manufacturing the device itself.

Facebook has a Rolodex — and facial recognition — for 800 million people. Facebook, like Amazon, has the tool kit to be a partner player in the wearables market. Facebook is controversially implementing facial recognition software to autotag photos from its 800 million users — software that would be a perfect fit with a wearable device. Like that guy on the train? Sorry, he’s “in a relationship.”

In three years, we believe wearables will matter to every product strategist, just as mobile and tablets matter today. And because the software platforms are the key to mainstream, these devices have the power to intensify the platform wars among the big five — over issues like talent, intellectual property and patents, developers and customers. Wearables will shift toward mainstream in three phases:

• Phase one: Apple grows the app-cessory market with a deeper investment in wearables. For instance, by adding more sensors and connectivity to the iPod nano, as well as Siri voice control, Apple could immediately spark innovation in iOS apps and more accessories for nano beyond its existing watchbands.
• Phase two: Google broadens wearable experimentation with its open platform. Our call that Google will dominate in wearables — at least in the short term — may be surprising given our skepticism about Android’s prospects on tablets in the past. But an open platform for experimentation is exactly what wearables will need to evolve out of the early stages.
• Phase three: Microsoft competes with an “anti-platform” platform. With Windows 8, Microsoft is pivoting away from .NET/Silverlight to the open Web protocols of HTML5 and Javascript. This shift will be a strength for Microsoft to build on, promoting a future OS for wearables as a more flexible, scalable platform for developers than iOS or Android.

Sarah Rotman Epps is a Senior Analyst serving consumer product strategy professionals at Forrester Research. Follow her on Twitter @srepps. To learn more about this research, visit the full wearables research report here.

As SVP of Worldwide Digital Media, Kessel oversees the company’s digital strategy, including books, music, video and the Kindle.

“After incredible success leading the Kindle team over the last several years, Steve Kessel decided to take a well-deserved and long-planned-for sabbatical,” said Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener.

Herdener declined to say when Kessel would return, but said that, in the meantime, Dave Limp, who runs the Kindle device business, and Russ Grandinetti, who runs Kindle content, were overseeing the digital business.

Kessel’s absence follows the launch of the Kindle Fire tablet late last year, and comes at a time when Amazon is aggressively pushing into digital content. Just today, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sent a letter to shareholders, emphasizing how the Kindle is disrupting the book publishing industry.

Some sources I talked to believed that Kessel, 46, was unlikely to return to Amazon and were characterizing his departure as early retirement. Another source pointed to internal documents, which listed Kessel as overseeing Donald Katz, the CEO of Audible, the company’s audiobooks group. However, Amazon’s investor page continues to list Kessel as the SVP of Worldwide digital media, and Herdener said Kessel is not retiring and is not in charge of Audible.

As one of 10 executives who report directly to Bezos, Kessel has worked closely with the visionary founder since 1999. Initially, he served as the VP of U.S. Books, Music, Video and DVD, and then was the VP of digital before landing in his current role.

According to a BusinessWeek article, it was Kessel who conspired with Bezos in 2004 to explore the radical idea of the online retailer making their own hardware.

Over the years, Kessel has been quoted occasionally in press releases, providing updates on how well the Kindle is selling. In October 2010, he said: “It’s still October and we’ve already sold more Kindle devices since launch than we did during the entire fourth quarter of last year—astonishing because the fourth quarter is the busiest time of year on Amazon.”

Amazon has never released specific sales numbers about the Kindle — a secret that has largely stayed under wraps, likely due to the company’s small management team.

Kessel received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Dartmouth College, and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

A letter sent to shareholders today by founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, titled “The Power of Invention,” tackles the publishing industry head-on by explaining how both authors and customers are benefiting from its Kindle publishing business.

While Bezos fails to address the DOJ lawsuit, which accused Apple and five major book publishers of conspiring to raise e-book prices, he provides a glimpse at how he’s changing the economics of the business on a small scale.

Bezos says Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing division has already produced more than a thousand authors who are selling more than a thousand copies a month. Some have reached hundreds of thousands of sales, and two have joined the Kindle Million Club.

Authors who use KDP get to keep their copyrights, keep their derivative rights, get to publish on their schedule – a typical delay in traditional publishing can be a year or more from the time the book is finished – and … saving the best for last … KDP authors can get paid royalties of 70%. The largest traditional publishers pay royalties of only 17.5% on ebooks (they pay 25% of 70% of the selling price which works out to be 17.5% of the selling price). The KDP royalty structure is completely transformative for authors. A typical selling price for a KDP book is a reader-friendly $2.99 – authors get approximately $2 of that! With the legacy royalty of 17.5%, the selling price would have to be $11.43 to yield the same $2 per unit royalty. I assure you that authors sell many, many more copies at $2.99 than they would at $11.43.”

If you can’t take Bezos at his own word, the letter includes eight quotes from customers and authors who have benefited from Amazon’s services, including its publishing, fulfillment and Web services.

“These innovative, large-scale platforms are not zero-sum — they create win-win situations and create significant value for developers, entrepreneurs, customers, authors, and readers,” he wrote.

The company’s stock was trading down 1.81 percent, or $3.46 a share today, to $187.23. In recent months, the stock has slipped from its 52-week high of $246.71 a share.

And now it appears the e-commerce giant has even more plans in the works.

A Wells Fargo Equity Research note distributed this week writes: “A key discovery this month is that Amazon has plans to expand the Prime membership benefits beyond the Amazon.com platform.”

The note points to a number of job descriptions, disclosing that Amazon is creating a “Prime Expansion” team, tasked with driving awareness of the Prime program and expanding the scope of its benefits, geographically and on and off Amazon.

So what areas or new benefits might Amazon be expanding into?

It’s not clear, and an Amazon spokesperson did not return emails seeking comment.

But first, let’s throw out the areas where Amazon won’t be expanding to — other online retailers. Today, Amazon sells pretty much everything under the sun, so it would be very hard for it to find a retailer that would be comfortable with letting Amazon run its loyalty program, even if it does mean offering perks like free shipping.

“I think any retailer would have to have their head examined if they allowed themselves to be a customer-acquisition tool for Amazon Prime,” said Mike Golden, president of ShopRunner. “Especially if it’s under the assumption that Amazon won’t compete with them. Because people have been proven false every single time.”

Of course, Golden has his biases.

ShopRunner, which includes eBay as an investor, operates a service — much like Prime — that offers shoppers free two-day shipping across a variety of retailers, including Toys “R” Us and PetSmart, for $79 a year.

But even if other retailers are out of the question, there are still some opportunities Amazon could be pursuing. For instance, it could work with other delivery services that don’t compete with Amazon.

ShopRunner has already demonstrated this through a partnership with Domino’s Pizza, which provides free delivery to ShopRunner members. Other scenarios with national scale could include Ticketmaster or Fandango, which have service fees at checkout.

Another internal program that Amazon is working on that could be a candidate for Prime is free access to Amazon Locker, which allows consumers to pick up packages from secure mailboxes at 7-Eleven. The lockers address a segment of the market that can’t receive packages at their homes because people work during the day and there’s nowhere for a delivery to be dropped off, or because it’s likely to get stolen.

So far, Amazon Prime is considered a very successful program that increases loyalty to Amazon.com — for an annual fee. As is typical with Amazon, it does not disclose how many Prime members it has, but Baird Equity Research estimates that there’s somewhere between seven million and 11 million members.

With even more benefits, it will make Prime — and Amazon overall — even harder for consumers to walk away from.

(Image courtesy of www.cicadamania.com)

As part of the announcement, the retailer is also confirming that it will take a 30 percent cut of each transaction, which is the standard across Apple’s App Store, Facebook and Google Play (Correction: In an earlier version, it stated that Google takes 5 percent, which only applies to the Google+ game network.)

The announcement is not a huge surprise, since Amazon has been testing in-app payments over the past few months with a number of developers in the Amazon Appstore, which runs on the Kindle Fire and a number of Android handsets.

The payments platform utilizes Amazon’s well-recognized and trusted “1-Click” purchasing experience that so many consumers are familiar with from shopping online. By bringing it to mobile, it will make it easy for consumers to purchase a few more coins inside a game or to subscribe to a magazine.

But while the announcement sounds fairly basic, the rollout is important for Amazon to get right, since developers’ initial reception to the Appstore was a little strained — and stories of making money on the platform have been mixed.

That’s because, unlike other app stores, Amazon has decided to dictate how much an app sells for, and in some cases, the company elects to make apps free as part of its Free App of the Day promotion. In doing so, developers sometimes make less revenue than they would normally expect (especially since there was no potential upside from in-app purchases).

Developers and publishers will be able to set the price of the items within the store, including virtual goods or subscriptions, an Amazon spokesperson said.

Based on developers that participated in the beta tests, so far Amazon’s Appstore looks like it has been monetizing well.

Storm8, which was one of the game developers that participated in the beta test, told AllThingsD that it generated $700,000 in revenue from in-app purchases in March — before Amazon’s cut. The Redwood City developer said it has 10 free-to-play apps in the store, including such titles as Kingdoms Live, Nightclub Story and Farm Story; at one point, four of its games ranked among the five most popular free apps on Amazon.

Flurry, which provides analytics software to developers, also estimated  that Amazon’s in-app payment platform monetizes well, and that it outperforms Google Play, but falls short of the industry’s gold standard, which is Apple.

Still, it’s unclear whether Amazon will be able to woo developers, given that it is so much smaller than the other players. Last month, after celebrating its first year in business, Amazon confirmed that it had more than 31,000 apps in its store, which is far fewer than either Google or Apple.

It’s also unclear how many devices the Appstore is installed on, since Amazon does not share much information, including how many Kindle Fires it has sold.

According to a report by IHS iSuppli, Amazon shipped 3.9 million Fires in the fourth quarter, to claim 14.3 percent of the market. That makes it the world’s second-largest tablet vendor, surpassing Samsung, which has been in the market far longer, with many more devices.

In the future, what could potentially be even more interesting for developers than in-app payments is if Amazon will let them use apps to sell merchandise, such as Rovio’s plush toys, or DVDs and other cross-promotional items.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the possibility.

Though the need for it may be moot, the world’s first solar-powered case for Kindle gets a nod. SolarKindle’s reserve battery case works with the standard Kindle or Kindle Touch and guarantees three months of unplugged Kindle reading time, provided that the user is in “normal sunlight conditions.” Taipei-based SolarFocus first showed off the product at CES earlier this year; it’s now shipping for $80. As we noted back then, the SolarKindle case does not work with the Kindle Fire.

Eighty dollars might seem like a lot — even for a renewable solar-energy panel — but the case also comes with a built-in LED reading lamp that’s supposed to last up to 50 hours, using the case’s battery and not the Kindle’s. And if direct sunlight isn’t an option for getting this thing juiced up, it also comes with a USB port for traditional charging.

Three months of battery life seems like a hefty claim. And here at AllThingsD, we put products through rigorous battery tests. So, while it’s a grueling job to test the SolarKindle case on a sunny beach for three months, I am graciously volunteering to do so, and pending approval from the bosses, will report back with the results.

The blueprints would more than double Amazon’s current footprint in Seattle, and hints at the rapid corporate-level expansion the e-commerce company anticipates over the next decade.

Last month, Amazon purchased three contiguous blocks in downtown Seattle. Terms of the sale were not disclosed, but the multimillion dollar — maybe billion-dollar — deal will represent Amazon’s first significant land purchase, once it closes.

Last night, Amazon’s architects presented plans to Seattle’s review board, laying out the company’s vision for an urban campus, complete with three 37-floor office towers, an auditorium, retail space and a few shorter, six-story buildings, reports Eric Pryne, a reporter at the Seattle Times, who attended the meeting.

A 36-page report detailing all the different layouts and scenarios can be found on the city’s Web site here. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on its plans, and apparently no company spokesperson spoke at last night’s meeting.

The plans are fairly shocking, given the company’s rapid growth over the past few years. Clearly, the company’s leader Jeff Bezos has a lot more surprises in store that may push the company beyond its core online retail and digital businesses,  including the Kindle.

At the end of the year, Amazon had 56,200 employees, up 67 percent year over year. Most of the hiring occurred in operations and customer service, including 17 new fulfillment centers.

It’s not clear how many employees Amazon has in its Seattle headquarters, but it already leases about 2.7 million square feet, including 1.7 million square feet in the so-called South Lake Union neighborhood, which has recently been revitalized by Seattle tech leader Paul Allen, and sits just outside the downtown core.

The company began taking preorders for the device in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain today, with a promised ship date of April 27. Notably, Amazon is not offering a cheaper advertising-supported version of the Kindle Touch in Europe, and the one it is offering will not support the Kindle lending library.

And what of the Kindle Fire? Is there a European ETA for that? Said an Amazon spokesperson, “We have nothing to announce at this time.”

Over the past year, Amazon has slowly been entering that space, aiming to go up against industry-leading Groupon.

So far, it has done fairly well. For example, Amazon is the fourth-largest daily deal provider in the U.S., following Groupon, LivingSocial and Travelzoo, according to Yipit, a deal aggregator that closely tracks the major players.

Starting early tomorrow, the company is planning a publicity stunt to raise its awareness even further, by posting $10 Amazon.com gift cards for five bucks.

The offer will be distributed on the AmazonLocal site, via email and on some Kindle devices, and has the potential to sell out, since limited quantities will be available. (Don’t get too excited, it’s limited to one per customer.)

As part of the promotion, Mark Eamer, a director of product at AmazonLocal, provided a glimpse into the company’s plans in the crowded local deals space (but that’s pretty good, considering the company’s corporate culture to not disclose much of anything).

Offering gift cards is a common way for companies in the space to drum up new subscribers, even though the companies often lose money. For example, last year, LivingSocial sold 1.3 million $20 Amazon gift cards for $10 apiece, Groupon pawned discounts for Barnes & Noble, and more recently, Google offered up gift cards from REI.

Eamer said this represents the first time it has sold gift cards for Amazon.com, but in the past, it has sold deals for other Amazon-owned properties, such as Diapers.com and Soap.com.

Up until now, most of AmazonLocal’s growth has been supported by the $175 million strategic investment it made two years ago in LivingSocial. Nine months ago, Amazon launched its first local deals site in Boise, Idaho, with the help of LivingSocial, and today it operates in 90 markets across 26 states and the District of Columbia.

Eamer said that even now most of the deals listed on the site come from LivingSocial, although AmazonLocal is hiring its own sales team in Seattle and in other locations to help source deals. He declined to say how many people work in the division.

Still, it’s clear that one of Amazon’s advantages in getting merchants to work with them over a competitor is its scale, he said.

Eamer would not disclose how many subscribers have signed up for AmazonLocal, but overall, the company has 164 million active customer accounts worldwide, defined as people who have made a purchase on the site in the past 12 months.

“There’s lots of competitors in this space, and we all want attention from the merchants. By far and away, they [merchants] answer the phone and want to hear what we have to say. We have relationships with millions of merchants around the world, and 164 million customers worldwide. We know how to work with merchants and connect with customers — it’s unique to Amazon.com.”

In the future, Eamer said, AmazonLocal would be open to talking to other providers beyond LivingSocial to bring more offers to the platform. “We would consider it and evaluate that as time goes on, or as another relationship presents itself,” he said.

Amazon’s success in the space is important not just because it is interested in going up against Groupon, but because it uses offers to discount the price of its hardware, including the Kindle e-readers. For instance, a Kindle Touch “with special offers” costs only $99, but one without offers — a.k.a. ads — is $139. In other words, if it can subsidize the cost of its hardware through the use of these offers, it can compete more deftly against Apple and others in the tablet space.

Another goal for the year is to continue to refine its targeting abilities. Currently, offers are only delivered to people based on geography only.

“One of our key tenets is delivering the right deal to the right person at the right time … Our targeting is limited by geography, but we’ll be working on some things in 2012.”

Of course, in the case of tomorrow’s Amazon.com gift card, it will be sent out to everyone.

It turns out that people responding to our poll about whether they were buying an iPad 3 — which Apple is unveiling this coming week — are overwhelmingly planning to fork over the dough for a new one.

Nearly 70 percent of those who answered said they would be buying the latest iteration of the popular tablet device, while 17 percent said they were sticking with their old one.

Only 11 percent used a competing tablet — powered by Google Android or Amazon Kindle.

And about 4.5 percent of respondents said that they had not decided, but were looking forward to the last “Twilight” movie, now that Bella finally has her fangs as a newborn vampire with a newborn baby, too.

Thus, many want a bite of the latest Apple, but are definitely not Twihards.

Here’s the poll again, if you want to add your vote:

View This Poll

The Barclays analyst now thinks Amazon moved five million units in the last few months of 2011. That’s down from his earlier estimate of 5.5 million, which was up from an even earlier estimate of 4.5 million.

Of course, Amazon could clear all this up by simply telling investors how many devices it sells. But if you held your breath waiting for that to happen, you would need really, really strong lungs.

If you like tracking analyst prognostications, you should also note that DiClemente has lowered his 2012 Kindle Fire and e-reader estimates, in part because he now thinks Amazon may not release new models until the second half of the year.

In a report Gazelle put out covering a six-week period from Dec. 15 to Feb. 2, the company paid particular attention to iPad trade-ins, noting that four times as many AT&T iPads have been traded in as Verizon iPads, due to increased demand in secondary markets worldwide, where most carriers run on GSM technology. But it was after that time frame — after Feb. 9 — that iPad trade-ins really jumped.

“With the possibility of an iPad 2 price cut ahead or an iPad 8-inch model, our iPad prices are at their highest point,” the report notes.

The re-commerce site also saw a 50 percent increase overall in Android tablet cash-ins, as well as — interestingly enough — a 25 percent increase in trade-ins of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which just came to market in November.

Gazelle, which launched in 2007, claims around 300,000 customers and has handled more than 600,000 product trade-ins online. The company says it resells the products through retail and wholesale outlets, and recycles items without resale value.

The company appears to measure the success of current product models by weighing overall unit sales against the volume of trade-ins it sees for the previous models. For example, Gazelle notes that a 50 percent increase in total iPhone trades around the holidays — combined with the fact that the most-traded item was the iPhone 3GS — indicates that the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S were likely popular gift items as people looked to trade up.

Running a quick “test trade-in” on Gazelle tells us that for a 16 gigabyte Wi-Fi iPad 2 in “good” condition — with some visible signs of use — the site is currently offering $240 through check, PayPal, or an Amazon.com gift card. But take note, consumers looking to sell: On eBay, which last year got a boost from resales of iPad 2, the same iPad 2 model is currently fetching around $500.

1. The rise of BODM (build once, deploy many) platforms

   Mobile platform fragmentation is growing — the broad range of platforms currently encompasses iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Bada, Symbian, Kindle and Nook, just to name a few. The result has been a wave of “build once, deploy many” platforms to create and distribute mobile applications, which will continue to grow in popularity as developers and content creators simply forgo the onerous task of building something unique for each mobile platform.

   According to a 2011 Nielsen Smartphone analytics report, Android users spend nearly an hour a day interacting with apps and the Web on their phones, with apps (67 percent) accounting for nearly twice the amount of time as the Web (33 percent). Bearing this consumption profile in mind, the economics of mobile content doesn’t encourage investment in new mobile development platforms as long as monetization doesn’t scale with these costs. In other words, developers won’t want to spend more on developing their app while the revenue they bring in is modestly incremental or flat.

   Among the most well-known platforms are PhoneGap, Spaceport.io (a.k.a. Siblingz, Inc.) for games and Appcelerator, the latter of which has already had more than 30,000 apps built using its platform. The approach of some of these services is that they enable developers to unlock the value of mobile web development with native app wrappers. However, a more challenging platform fragmentation problem has been largely ignored: unlocking app development for non-technical consumers and independent content creators through a compelling graphical user interface (GUI).

   Presently, non-technical content creators are disenfranchised from mobile app development unless they invest, usually unprofitably, in mobile web and app development services, or they learn to code outright.

   One company, kleverbeast, is tackling this challenge. Having already signed up prominent beta enterprise customers and non-technical content creators, kleverbeast is empowering digital app publishing across iOS, Android, and other emerging platforms with a compelling native user experience for their app owners’ audiences. The unique technology and market strategy has helped kleverbeast address mobile platform fragmentation, not just for developers, but also for the benefit of the average consumer.

   This new breed of BODM companies will proliferate in 2012, and I expect more than a million apps and game titles will choose this path.

2. Angel funding valve tightens and IPO mafias move into the picture

   Angel investing has risen in popularity over the past two years, but the long tail of unproven individual angels will wane as two events unfold: (1) Many angel-funded start-ups will go belly-up, unable to secure Series A financing or a bridge loan, and (2) institutional investors will adroitly strong-arm early, passive investors.

   Angel dollars widen the capital base available to entrepreneurs in early tech start-ups opening the door to tech innovation. However, many of these new angel investors don’t realize that frequently they will be squeezed down on their ownership percentage in subsequent rounds of financing and face less favorable terms. Many fresh angels have assumed greater risk than is commensurate with their early ownership and expected more upside than they end up getting. Subsequently, some angels won’t have the capital to diversify their portfolios or participate in follow-up rounds of financing.

   Investing can be risky for many fresh angels hungry to keep up with the Joneses and raise their social capital. As these lessons are learned, angel investing will swing back to some rational levels.

   The flipside of this may be the next IPO mafias. Expect a new crop of angel investors to emerge from some of those who benefited from Groupon, Zynga and the much-anticipated Facebook IPO. These IPO angels will take over early-stage deals and fund employees from these successful brands that decide to go it on their own. Ex-Googlers fund ex-Googlers all the time, and the mafias of tech titans will continue to proliferate.

3. One great new mobile social media company will be born out of the U.S. election cycle of 2012

   In 2008, President Barack Obama was widely praised for his mobile marketing prowess, which many political strategists evangelized as contributing to his victory in the election and igniting the youth base to get out and vote.

   Campaign managers utilized a combination of social and mobile media vehicles, with several businesses benefiting as a result: from ad networks like Quattro Wireless (acquired by Apple in 2010), to start-up companies like CommerceTel, which powered the President’s interactive voice applications.

   Adding weight to this trend are emerging consumer behaviors over social networks and the power of indirect, viral outreach. A study conducted by SocialVibe revealed that “94 percent of social media users of voting age engaged by a political message watched the entire message, and 39 percent of those people shared it with an average of 130 friends.” Powerful, period.

   The power of social technology to empower and persuade won’t be ignored by today’s candidates, and we’ll likely see the emergence of at least one great company out of the 2012 election.

If the rest of this year is anything like the last one, we’re in for a wild ride of fragmentation, consolidation and innovation.

Dinesh Moorjani is the founder and CEO of Hatch Labs, a mobile start-up incubator creating new platforms and applications to improve mobility for the wireless generation.

“The rumors are true,” Watson said in a Twitter post. “The team is in great hands.”

At Amazon, Watson will lead a group working on Kindle applications for various Amazon-made and non-Amazon devices.

Watson’s move was earlier reported by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley.

Update: Microsoft confirmed that Watson’s last day is Monday.

“Brandon did a great job helping us build a vibrant developer community and we wish him well with his next adventure,” a representative said in a statement.

Microsoft did not immediately say who would pick up Watson’s duties.

The comments follow a less than stellar fourth-quarter performance in which the gigantic e-commerce provider spent nearly as much money as it brought in the door — even during its busiest quarter of the year.

Profits for the quarter fell 58 percent, while annual earnings were cut nearly in half.

Some analysts were hoping that the end of the year would be a low point for margins and that Amazon would start growing in 2012 as it benefited from the steep investments made the prior year.

But that’s not part of the plan.

“We’re incredibly optimistic about the opportunity that we have, and that’s why we have invested the way we have and why we’re continuing to invest in the business,” said Amazon’s CFO Tom Szkutak in a conference call with analysts.

For clarity, Piper Jaffray analyst Charles Munster asked again: “So, your outlook in terms of investment philosophy hasn’t changed versus last quarter going forward?”

“No, no,” Szkutak said. “We are continuing to look as we always do. We learn every week, month and quarter about customer adoption. We are looking at a lot of positive things across the business in terms of adoption, specifically Kindle growth from a device standpoint and content that’s following that.”

Other categories seeing growth, he said, include clothing, consumables, consumer electronics and Amazon Web Services.

“There’s a lot of interesting opportunities that we continue to invest in. So we are pleased with the performance in Q4 and what it means going forward for us.”

Over the past year, Amazon has invested heavily in infrastructure, including 17 fulfillment centers around the globe. At the end of the year, it had 56,200 employees, up 67 percent year over year, with most of the hiring coming in operations and customer service.

It has also invested heavily in the digital content business, including the Kindle.

It’s widely assumed that Amazon is breaking even or taking a slight loss on the sale of each Kindle Fire. It’s also securing expensive partnerships with content companies across music, video and books, and giving some of that content away as part of the $80 Prime membership, which also includes free two-day shipping.

All of those are bets that Amazon is hoping will reap profits over the long term, as customers continue to consume after they purchase an e-reader or tablet or sign up for Prime.

So far, it’s too early to see how the investment is faring, especially when it comes to new categories.

“It’s very, very early,” Szkutak said, “but so far, we like what we see, so that’s why we are continuing down the path of adding more content and making Prime better. … Because we are investing a lot, we are making sure we understand it very well.”

A lot of details, like Kindle sales numbers, are still being kept under wraps, but he promised Amazon will someday share more about how it is doing.

Unfortunately, the market isn’t as patient. In after-hours trading, the stock was down almost 10 percent at one point. During the session, it ended up down, 8.7 percent, or nearly $17 , to close at $177.50 a share.

Can’t wait for high school calculus iBooks where kids have to triangulate Kindle sales with rubbish percentage data

– Dan Frommer, via Twitter

Coliloquy, a start-up demoing at D: Dive into Media, is running with that idea, in the hopes of creating a new kind of fiction-reading experience, built on the Amazon Kindle developer platform.

Books released using Coliloquy are written by authors but are released as “active applications,” rather than as e-books with a fixed set of pages.

For the reader, that means the books can be changed and updated over time, just like apps.

Serialized stories, like those that used to appear regularly in magazines, are just the beginning.

In some stories, readers have the option of selecting desired traits in the characters, which are then automatically woven into their version of the story.

In other words, your Fabio can be a brunet.

Romantic fiction aside, Coliloquy’s platform offer authors the ability to adjust stories based on feedback from readers — something previously sequestered in the nerdiest of fan-fiction forums.

Coliloquy stories are already available, but the demo at D: Dive Into Media showcased early-user data and the company’s first contemporary novel, as well as a new, personalized Erotica series.

We can’t wait to see what they’ve added to the conference swag bags.