October 20 2011, 6:49 PM
When it comes to the big unveiling, the product demonstration, the hype machine, the ability to make the public at large really want something, nobody does it better than Apple. Ever since Apple first brought out the original iPhone (and some may argue starting with the original iPod), Apple has been the master of marketing a brand new product. The whole production of Steve Jobs going on stage, describing a product, introducing key team members that help put the product together, unveiling the new product, and finally telling the world why they wanted this new product has been turned into an Art. Or a science. Maybe some sort of Scientific Art…
And while some reveals have been bigger than others, and there have been plenty of vocal critics, the tech community as a whole has more or less lapped them up. That is, until the iPhone 4S. Whether it was the lack of an ailing Steve Jobs, the change in energy, or even just the product itself, the tech community had a general consensus: “meh”.
The shocking thing is that just a week or so prior, Amazon unveiled their brand new Android powered Tablet (along with more traditional Kindles), the Kindle Fire. Not only did Amazon have a successful unveiling, they generated the kind of buzz that normally only Apple is capable of. Is it a miraculous product? Well, not really. Spec wise it’s somewhat mundane. Not bad, not at all, but nowhere near the top of the line. Form factor? It’s almost identical to the Blackberry Playbook. A pleasant enough device, but hardly revolutionary. Super amazing features? Some very interesting ones, for sure, but nothing that one would consider absolute game changers. So it must be the price, right? $199 for a tablet in a world where $500 is somewhat the norm. Oh yeah, that is definitely a big part of it. The price is right, no doubt. But even a great price only takes you so far…
What happened during the unveiling was that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, channeled Steve Jobs at his absolute best. Smug, slightly pretentious, confident as all hell, but most importantly, oozing that tech hipster charisma.He didn’t stand there and list out specs that are utterly meaningless to the majority of the population. He didn’t talk abstract things like CPU, GPU or RAM. Jeff Bezos did it the Apple way. He told us that the device is amazing, showed us that the device is amazing, told us that we wanted it, told us why we wanted it, and then told us what an amazing value it is. Everything was quantifiable, not abstract. Instead of a boring slideshow, he used a combination of ad spots, peppy dialog and engineers dumbing everything down to “it’s bloody fast, yo!”. This isn’t just another in a long line of boring Android tablets that all seem the same. This is pure Amazon, a brand name that has a great deal more leverage in the consumer mind than Samsung, HTC or Motorola.
The genius of it is that it totally outdoes Apple’s offering. Oh, not from a technical standpoint, and certainly everything is totally arguable. But looking at it as advertised, this device is lined up perfectly. There is no misconception whatsoever that this is a content consumption device. Nobody will think enterprise with the Kindle Fire. This little guy has content lined up in a way that only Apple has done before, and lined it up in an even more inclusive fashion. Books, movies, TV, games, apps… All coming from a single source, just like Apple. Only this system bears the Amazon seal of approval. Easy access to what you want, when you want, how you want, and all from the same vendor that sold you your device. Apple’s claim to fame was the ease in which content was delivered. Amazon has matched them, and in some ways surpassed them.
But then you get back to the price. $199. Three hundred dollars cheaper than the least expensive iPad 2. Amazon is playing it smart here. They aren’t looking to make much of a profit, if any, on the sale of each Kindle Fire. They know that once you buy it, they have you. You will be using their services, buying their content, and getting deeper into their ecosystem. They might not make the profit up front, but they will make it in the end, it’s inevitable. They will expand their user base massively and quickly, and then they’ll start raking in the cash.
The Kindle Fire isn’t trying to be the best. They don’t have to. They aren’t trying to make a device with incredibly high theoretical speed and computational power that the majority of the population will never use. They are playing it smart and thinking about the end user, not the tech geek. They are making the user experience top notch, making it dirt simple to use, an ensuring that the user keeps coming back to them. This isn’t the half finished Playbook that couldn’t decide whether it was commercial or enterprise, this isn’t the half baked Touchpad with sub standard hardware and an under optimized tablet OS, this isn’t a slew of Android tablets with a terrible UI and lag problems despite top of the line hardware. This is their iPad. Simple, elegant, and what the public wants. Only a whole lot cheaper.
The tech world lost a visionary in Steve Jobs, who was definitely one of a kind. But if the unveiling of the Kindle Fire is any indication, it’s Amazon that will carry on that tradition, not Apple. Jeff Bezos brought his A game, and it showed. The Kindle Fire may not kill the iPad, but it’s going to be the first device on the market that is going to make Apple sweat.
No comments:
Post a Comment