Why I will not buy new Kindle Paperwhite

I like my Kindle – it is simple to use and Wispernet sync is fabulous. I like that it connects to Wikipedia and dictionary. Archiving is nice. It is not perfect for me however. I would have liked to have color screen. I would have liked to scroll though pages and chapters. Books suggestions are not relevant to my interests and my language.

The new Kindle has scrolling feature I’ve been waiting for however not color screen. If you read an illustrated book, especially one that requires you visually see things, such as Da Vinci Code, it is hard to do on black and white. New Kindle has several features that encourage children to read. Color screen would attract kids as much as if not more than those features.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9 vs. iPad3

Amazon built Kindle Fire HD 8.9’’ to target iPad customer segment. How do these two tablets stack up?

Specs	Kindle Fire HD 8.9	iPad 3
Display	1920x1200	2048x1536
Size	8.9 inch	9.7 inch
Weight	1.25 lb (575 g)	1.44 lb (653 g)
Storage	32 GB	32 GB
Connectivity	4G+Wi-Fi	4G+Wi-Fi
Device price	$499	$729
Data plan (per year)	$50	$230
Camera	???	5MP
Brand	Budget	Premium

Kindle is lighter by almost 0.2 pounds and smaller by almost an inch, which is an advantage in my opinion. However iPad has higher resolution and premium brand which helps resell it at higher price later. Amazon claims Kindle Wi-Fi is 40% faster. iPad camera has 5 MP and I could not find camera specs for Kindle Fire HD; suspect it has fewer megapixels. Content is comparable across.

Comparable iPad is $200+ more expensive and data plan also costs more than 4 times. Amazon Kindle Fire HD is a very decent device at more affordable price, which should make it successful.

Amazon sites: mobile web customer experience needs improvement

I love shopping on Amazon sites because of the best prices and great shopping experience, useful product reviews, great customer service and convenience. As you also know I am a big fan all mobile. In this blog post I wanted to share my experience as mobile customer shopping starting with Mobile Web first, providing some suggestions along the way.

Mobile web customer traffic will surprise many. My friend at Blue Nile (online diamond store) said more than 10% of buyers use mobile phones. About the same amount of Capital One new credit cards applications are filed on mobile phone browsers. Discussion why people buy diamonds and apply for a credit cards on their phone will not reverse trend of increasing customers using mobile devices to browse online stores and make purchases. Bad mobile site customer experience will drive down conversion rate and consequently good one will enhance it. Losing mobile revenue and diminishing mobile customer experience many online retailers would like to avoid.

My Amazon.com mobile shopping experience is rather decent. Home page is optimized for a mobile browser. With few exceptions, buttons are right size and the home page is not overloaded with content – which could be nightmare on small screen. The site even detects which mobile phone OS user is browsing from and prompt to download corresponding app from app store. Amazon site browsing and purchasing is relatively easy on a mobile phone as you can see from the screenshots below.

However, I think some improvements can be made to the home page, which I highlighted on screenshots below. There is empty space to the right of Today’s Deals, Books, DVD and Music. The same time the mentioned categories are too small for a human finger and bunched together with much empty space available to the right. Space to the right can be used to increase those buttons/controls. 'More categories' button opens another page with another list of tiny categories with lots of white space to the right. I do not have data on what categories mobile customers are looking for and hope most looked after are easily accessible. I cannot get to Amazon’s clothing and apparel easily - the items that offer much higher margins than DVDs, books or music. Ensuring customer can easily get to softlines is important for profitability. 'Sign In' button is too small also – buyer will not purchase unless they signed in – I accidentally hit ‘Feedback’ instead because 'Sign In' is too small.

Recommendations:

1. Make all buttons and controls finger/touch friendly
2. Ensure home screen has most commonly used by mobile customers category list
3. Make available categories with higher margins (softlines) easily accessible from the home screen

When I browsed other Amazon retail properties: My Habit, Endless and ShopBop from my mobile phone, the experience was not mobile-optimized at all as you can see from screenshots below. I viewed the same content as I would have on my desktop. Mobile optimization work here is just starting. Sites need to be optimized by 

1. Listening and observing mobile web customer: needs, habits, action, trends, etc
2. Prioritizing content from each site and making it available based on relevancy to mobile web customer, optimizing small screen real estate
3. Simplifying overall experience and design to ensure ease of use

Endless, in my opinion, needs the most work to appeal to mobile web customer. From screenshots below you can see that site is rather cluttered with options for desktop user. While many visuals size is OK, text is very hard to read without zooming in.

Screenshots below of My Habit and ShopBop are less cluttered and the visuals also viewed better on the mobile screen. But text is also too small making it hard to navigate and select needed options. While the sites are friendlier for mobile user than Endless, they still need work to prioritize in terms of relevancy and ease of use to mobile web customer.

And finally, adding a couple of screenshots of mobile sites that I view have one of the best mobile web customer experience: Starbucks and Kayak. As you can see neither site waste precious real estate of mobile screen and the same time items are right size. Content is highly relevant for mobile customer.

Amazon to enter iPad space?

I have written before that Apple is planning to release smaller iPad to enter Kindle Fire market segment. Article in Digitimes reports that Amazon is working with Foxconn on making 10-inch Kindle Fire that "will begin shipments in the second quarter of 2012".

Developers make more money on Amazon Appstore than on Android Market

For quite some time developers knew that iPhone user is more likely to pay for an app and they can enjoy higher revenues publishing with Apple. There are more free apps on Android Market and average price also lower than on iPhone app store.

Kindle Fire case is rather interesting. Expectations of success of a branched store should be low. A recent article reported that Amazon Appstore, which has selected apps from Android Market as well as Amazon-only, have their developers enjoy higher revenues than Android. In addition Amazon Appstore customers are more likely to buy an app than Android customers. Same article reports that over 60% of Amazon Appstore apps are paid compared to less than 35% on Android Market.

I am not surprised. Amazon customer are buyers – go to Amazon to make purchases. Google evolves around concept of free.

Apple to enter Kindle market segment

Apple has sold 15 million iPad in the last quarter of 2011, well ahead of expected 13 million that happened Kindle Fire went on market. Kindle Fire sold between 4 and 5 million. During the earnings call Tim Cook said this concerning the rival Kindle Fire: “I looked at the data – particularly in the US – on a weekly basis after Amazon launched the Kindle Fire, and in my view there wasn’t an obvious effect on the [iPad sales] numbers”. No wonder. Products address drastically different market segments. This case is similar to MySQL and Oracle database. Users of each would never be using the other produce for obvious reasons. Jeff Bezos said when Kindle Fire went on market there are two strategies: charge more and charge less. Amazon is in the second category and both companies are successful in selling tablets. There is no need for Tim Cook to bash Kindle Fire.

On the other hand if we look at sales per week in the Q4 of 2011 Amazon and Apple has sold about the same number of devices: aprox. 1 million. That may make Apple worry. LA Times wrote that iPad market share of tablets has reduced from 64% to 57%.

There are no indicators that Amazon is trying to move to premium market segment space ($500-$800). Apple on the other hand is reported by Wall Street Journal to be building smaller iPad which will cost less and have smaller screen (the biggest cost in the device).

B&N is about to commit suicide: to spin off its Nook business

Kodak has been major player in photography for over the 100 years. Until it invented 13 pound camera that could record images digitally. The evolution of such digital camera and inability of Kodak to change with the consumer and the market will force the company into bankruptcy soon.

Barnes and Noble was founded about the same era with Kodak – late 19^th century. Unlike Kodak it did not invent digital book reader but did introduce its own Nook in October 2009. No sober analyst predicted the Nook to make a dent in Amazon’s Kindle business but you would need to empty several drinks before an idea of selling Nook arm (instead of brick and mortar arm) would come to mind.

“We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our Nook business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value,” William Lynch, Barnes & Noble CEO, said in a statement.

If you are B&N shareholder the message is clear: Lynch is about to raise white flag above the headquarters. Value of B&N without digital is same as value of a gift’s wrapping paper.

News are out: Kindle Fires are sold at a loss

Previous reports indicated that $80 Kindle costs more to make. Today I learned Kindle Fire BOM cost is actually $201.70. We all know that Kindle is a window into Amazon content and services and that is how the company is planning to make money.
But on top of BOM you need to account for costs of shipping the devices to users, maintaining infrastructure and 3G, tech and customer support, datacenters ...it all also contributes to 4% operating margins that Amazon's board finds acceptable.

Amazon Fires up Kindle production by 1 million

Amazon has not sold a single Kindle Fire yet, but the orders has exceeded all expectations. $200 price helps a lot. Today

• 2,000 Kindle Fires ordered per hour since the announcement
• 100,000 units ordered first day
• Estimated 2.5 million pre-orders has been made already
• Amazon is on track to sell 5 million Kindle Fires this holiday season

To fill the demand Amazon has increased orders from supply chain from 3.5 to 4 million and now bumps it up by another million.

B&N fights Fire with Nook Tablet

Barnes & Noble releases its Nook Tablet Nov 7th, ahead of Amazon release of Fire. Price of $250 is also aggressive, but still higher than Amazon's. It does not have apps store nor it allows connection to Android Market, so, there are no apps. Other content: 2.5 million ebooks, hulu and netflix for video and pandora for music.

While this is a somewhat of a solid effort, the product is more expensive than direct competitor - Amazon and it provides less content. It is doomed to be second.

Kindle pre-sales are on Fire

Blog Cult of Android reported leak info that Kindle Fire orders are getting in at the rate of 2,000 hour and 50,000 day. This is beating iPad and iPad2 upside the head silly with projected 2.5 million orders before the launch. iPad initially sold 300k units at the launch day. iPad2 sold 2.5 million only after the 1 month on the market.
We do not need to wait long.

Kindle is about to set tablet PM market on Fire

After a few days of digesting the information about Kindle Fire I decided to write what I think about it. Just like the price made personal computer personal and mainstream, its price will make Kindle Fire a success. Will it kill the iPad? No. They will co-exist successfully. Apple command premium price deriving from premium brand and Amazon has always been a cost leader or loss leader. Price makes all the difference for Kindle to be successful, access to content and productivity apps. Both strategies work. BlackBerry Playbook and HP TouchPad that just got eviction notice from the tablet PC market.

My question is if Kindle is Window 8 killer? Windows 8 is Microsoft next version for tablet PCs and slates. Microsoft has never charged high premiums and has always been a follower into a proven market. When Windows 8 will ship there will be two very successful platforms on the market. Is Windows 8 going to struggle gaining market share just like Windows Phone 7? Very likely.

Even though market share will be hard to gain Microsoft patents business will reach billion dollar revenue from Android patents. Amazon is already paying Microsoft licensing fees for technologies in its Kindle e-reader. Those fees did not include Android, says Seattle Times. Of cource, Microsoft would trade all the revenue from Android patents to the success of own mobile platform.