Serious iPad Competitor?

Yesterday MG Siegler of Tech Crunch posted a hands on account of the upcoming 7 inch tablet computer coming from Amazon later this year and it provides an interesting insight into how any company can compete with the iPad from Apple.  It's becoming obvious that Android still has a ways to go before it can seriously hope to eat into the iPad dominance that Apple has established.  Whether it is fragmentation from the various manufacturers customizing their offerings or shortfalls in the end user experience no one has yet come up with a formula that shouts out "iPad Killer".  HP formally threw in the towel a few weeks ago and now there are indications that the RIM Playbook may be heading down a similar path.  What will it take to dethrone the iPad and does Amazon have the secret sauce to pull it off?

The iPad Secret To Success So Far

It's safe to say that despite the fact that tablet computers have been around in one form or another for over ten years it wasn't until Apple entered the space it was basically a niche market that had yet to find a mainstream user base.  The concept was nice on paper but the implementations left a lot to be desired.  Building on the experience gained with first the iPod and iPhone Apple was able to bring to market a device that just looked good and worked just as well as it looked.  Instead of shoe-horning an operating system designed for a keyboard and mouse user interface with a kludge of touch/stylus interface into it the iPad was touch friendly from the start.  The operating system (iOS) just had to be scaled for a larger screen instead of jurry rigging an interface onto it the way Windows based tablets had been before.  Throw in a vibrant developer community already in place for iOS and it's a formula for almost instant success.

There are two true secrets to the success of the iPad.  First was that Apple already had an established ecosystem of proudcuts and services in place in the form of the iTunes Store.  The second is that old axium that has been a part of Apple products since the return on Steve Jobs in the late 1990s:  it just works.

Where Everyone Else Has Gotten It Wrong So Far

After the success of the iPad many other companies saw the potential for new profits and probably more than a little worry about being left behind in this new emerging market space.  As a result they looked around for something, anything, they could bring out as soon as possible to try and stave off loosing the race at the begining.  The results so far have not really been that great.

The most widely used operating system they looked to was Google's Android which at that time was not optimized for a large screen tablet form factor, but that didn't stop them.  Google itself was behind the curve and promised a tablet optimized version of their mobile OS and asked manufacturers to just wait a little longer.  I guess that's easy to do when you're Google and have a bunch of cash in the bank but not so easy when you see your potential customers buying someone elses hardware and getting hooked into someone elses ecosystem.

What ended up happening is sub-par hardware running a sub-par tablet operating system with no real cohesive ecosystem to offer any compelling reason to buy in to.  

There were various versions of Android running on these tablets, none of which were optimized for a larger screen experience.  There were only a handfull of "tablet apps" out there, usually ones bundled with the device and only available for a particular device at that.  And as far as media content other than DRM-free music there have yet to be any real options for Android.  Netflix would work with some devices but not with others.  If you wanted video on the device one still has to resort to either ripping their own DVDs or hitting up the various file sharing sites.

It's The Ecosystem Stupid

Apple has been spot on the past five or so years in that it's the ecosystem they provide that makes their mobile products such a huge success.  They provide their customers everything they need in one convienient place in the form of their iTunes store.  Need some music?  They got you covered.  Want to buy or rent a movie?  They have that for you to.  Bored and need a game to pass the time?  You got it, just open up their App Store.  Need a good book to read on that flight cross country?  Well, iBooks will have it on your device in a few seconds.

This is where everyone else has gotten it wrong so far and this is where Amazon has the potential to get it very right.

Amazon knows it can't compete on hardware and it doesn't need to invest in its own operating system.  Trying to compete on hardware is expensive and as long as Apple has Johnny Ive they know they won't win on that front.  It takes millions of dollars to develop, test, and deploy an operating system and as Palm and HP proved that's one risky investment.  Instead they are looking to use Android but with their own twist.  Instead of relying on Google services the way most Android deployments do they'll rely on their own services, and that is where the rub is.

By using Android as a basis for their tablet and relying on their own services for content this could very well be a winning combination.  Not to mention pricing the tablet itself at $249 and throwing in a year of their Amazon Prime service it just might do something no one else has done so far and that is eat into the marketshare of the iPad.

Amazon already has a streaming video service in place and by giving all their new tablet owners a free year of Prime membership they will have a large library just waiting to be watched.  Their cloud music service means one doesn't have to store all their music on the device.  Amazon has been running an Android App Store of their own since the begining of the year and by only offering applications that will run on that particular device the consumer doesn't have to worry about which version of Android they are running when it comes to wondering if a program will run on their device.  Their Kindle e-book store is the largest such service out there and it'll already be onboard and ready to read.

And remember, Amazon Prime includes free two-day shipping with no spending limit on thousands of products and overnight shipping for only $3.99 and everyone who buys a Kindle Tablet will be getting that service included.  One can shop from their tablet and get it shipped for free.

In other words someone at Amazon has been watching Apple and seeing what works and looking at everyone else and seeing what doesn't.  

Final Thoughts

I have to be honest, I'm an iPad owner and I've not given much thought to purchasing an Android tablet.  Until now.

For $250 I can get a seven inch tablet device with integrated Amazon services and get a year of the normally $80 Prime service thrown in for good measure.  That's tempting to me as I'm currently signed up for a one month trial of Amazon Prime and if for $170 more I could score a cool piece of tech as well I'll probably be onboard.  Would it replace my iPad?  No way, but I could see having this around as a secondary protable device as I don't really like taking the iPad out of the house too much and a seven inch device would be better in that respect anyway.

In all reality though I don't think Apple has much to worry about, at least in the short term (1 to 3 years) as they have a huge installed user base right now with the iPad and the main lure of the Kindle Tablet will be its tight integration with the various Amazon services.  What other manufacturers of tablet devices should do is take a look at how Amazon is doing this and see about making some sort of agreements with either Amazon or someone else for some sort of ecosystem tie in.