John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Content and Paying Customers Could Make Amazon Tablet a Killer

Amazon likely does have a tablet in the works and Apple better pay attention, because the retailer will likely bring it to market before the holidays. So says Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, who, without citing sources, says he expects Amazon to debut a 10-inch media-centric tablet built around Nvidia’s forthcoming Kal-El quad-core chipset and designed to leverage its not inconsiderable content offerings.

“Our expectation is for a Google Android-based tablet centered around offering access to Amazon.com’s media services and content including Amazon Video, Amazon Music and even Amazon games,” Blair says. “Additionally, we would expect the device to leverage Amazon’s recent Cloud Drive storage capability for browser-based streaming or through a Cloud Drive app.”

With the right specs, this could make for a compelling piece of hardware and, perhaps, a viable alternative to the iPad. As Blair notes, Amazon is really the only company with a storehouse of mobile content and a vast base of registered, credit-card-holding users similar to Apple’s.

“As with Apple’s iTunes, users could log into the Amazon tablet using their existing Amazon ID and instantly gain access to movies, TV shows, music, digital games, Android Apps, and more,” he explains. “Apple has frequently spoken of the power of the number of credit card users iTunes has; Amazon is the only other player in the industry to have something similar. Amazon also has consumer’s trust that has been built up over more than a decade of good service.”

Those are potentially tremendous advantages–ones that no other Android tablet maker has. And they could mean the difference between another also-ran tablet market contender and a true iPad rival.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus