Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduces the Kindle Fire
Yesterday’s launch of Amazon’s new Tablet, the Kindle Fire, has stirred up all sorts of trouble for the other vendors in the same space.
Will Apple be hurting? A little bit, but it’s really RIM, Microsoft and the other Android tablets that are in for a tough time. Amazon seem to have created a lovely device and new web browser aimed at the mass market. There is plenty of people that want an iPad but don’t want to pay the premium for a Tablet. We all saw what happened when HP did a firesale on their Touchpads, the price point was just right for the mass market.
There are also plenty of people out there that love their Kindle’s and prefer the smaller form factor. I’m a new Kindle user. I read 4 books on holiday last week and loved the device. When my iPhone blew up I even tried out the Kindle browser. It wasn’t great, but it looks like Amazon have invested a lot of R&D to build their new Silk browser. It looks very slick and uses Amazon’s EC2 cloud to really optimize the user experience.
I think the Kindle Fire is really going to put huge pressure on Microsoft. Consumers are now seeing that you can buy really capable devices without having to spend the Steve Ballmer OS tax. Do users need Windows 8 and Office outside of the workspace? Not really. And I think that the reality of this issue has hit home after the mass walkout during Ballmer’s speech at the Microsoft Company meeting last week.
But the key to Amazon’s success is going to be content. Their vast amount of books, magazines and music means that the Kindle is certain to be a must have device. Portable, slick, easy and powerful when on the Internet. I have been trying to think what sort of people will buy one? To be honest at that price I think its pretty much aimed at everyone. In today’s consumer market, it’s the content that is king. Amazon has that in bucket loads, and all on a device less than $200.
I’m really bored of Facebook; it just doesn’t give me what I want anymore. I find myself scrolling through lots of irrelevant pointless updates and information that I really could do without. OK, its great for keeping in contact with friends and posting photos, but the activity feed is becoming pointless bar a few exceptions. I know the new “Subscribe” button may improve this but I’m still waiting to see.
I am however, still a huge fan of Twitter. Or more realistically, I am a fan of Tweetdeck. Purely because I can split the people I follow into topic areas, Technology, Social Business, News etc. So depending on what I want to know at a particular time , I can find it or find someone who might know about it. But what Tweetdeck doesn’t do, is make the viewing user experience as pleasurable; I can’t preview photos or links so I’m sure I just skip over a lot that I may be interested in.
This maybe where Google+ will provide the happy medium? Ok, it’s not brilliant yet either, but it seems to be trying to be best both of both worlds. I like their use of circles and huddles so I can decide what information to view and with whom; it seems a more structured way of consuming the vast amount of content that is out there. At the moment thought, the users of Google+ seem to be more of a professional audience and not the GenY or Millennials that Google probably wanted. But is that a bad thing? Not for me.
As someone who is focused on Social Business Collaboration I can’t wait until we see Google+ as part of Google Apps. I’m a fan of software like Yammer and Jive that really allow employees to collaborate better. But it’s the ability to collaborate on documents that really allows social software to really enter the Enterprise. Software like Cisco Quad is where I think Social Business is really headed with the blend of social networking but with the Enterprise ready document management. Google+ will inevitably have this is well, all in the cloud which makes it available to even the smallest company. Then when you add in end to end unified communications such as IM and video, whether its Google Voice or Cisco Jabber, you create the optimal user cockpit for your employees.
Quad, like Google+, will also have the potential of their own Apps Marketplace which will allow 3rd party software vendors to build plugs such as Finance & CRM apps. The outcome of this is that the whole Business can embrace Enterprise 2.0 rather than keeping it in purely a GenY silo. So when Management say that Social Business is just like Facebook, you can be confident that won’t be the case.
