War and Pieces

Welcome to the android  marketplace wars.  The opening salvo by Amazon was in first creating it’s own Marketplace for android applications, and then grabbing some high profile applications exclusively for the Amazon Marketplace for Android.

That’s only half the equation though because most Android devices have the Google Android Market pre-installed which gives it some advantages

• Trust                  If it came with the device it must be ok
• Access              If access is easy and it’s not broken most users will just use what’s on the device
• Interest            The typical user might not even know or care that there is another way to purchase applications

Amazon had to have realized that kindle has a limited lifetime and their “no-glare” commercials fall flat from a potential iPad users perspective. It’s also apparent that a single use device may have minor benefits but it’s hard to rationalize carrying around 3 or 4 devices just on the chance that you might be reading in bright sunlight.

So the latest rumor has it that they will be developing their own Android tablet, quite honestly I am surprised it took this long. One can hope that after all that TV commercial time the device will arrive with an anti-glare screen

The real story here is that selling applications will be analogous to selling books in regards to profitability and you can bet they want in on that game, so what will it take to for Amazon to hit a home run?

• Produce a fairly killer device in terms of price and feature set (and for goodness don’t cheap out and forget the GPS!)
• Pre-populate the device with great applications, even if they have to build them internally or contract out for them
• Incent developers to publish there vs. the Android Market
• Do a better job of QA on applications than the Android Market has to date. 10,000 usable apps beats 100,000 crappy ones any day

A fight between Amazon and Google over how to do a proper market will be a good thing for everyone in the end because competition always is, but in the short term Google and Amazon should take care not to allow this to produce even more fragmentation. Doing so will inevitably let the iPad continue to solidify it’s hold in this space and that won’t help either company.

Guerrilla Tactics

In some ways Amazon is the underdog in this and can play the role of the Guerilla fighter by using Androids open source stance against any power plays Google might use to control it’s efforts to be the dominant market place. On top of this since Google doesn’t actually have it’s own tablet and bringing one out might potentially alienates it’s partners, in other words Google is in a fairly fixed position while amazon is free to maneuverer.

It’s true that Google owns the platform and has apparently brought a lot of pressure on partners in the past and undoubtedly will do the same with Amazon. This is somewhat of a paper tiger though because as mentioned If they push too hard in that regard they will get a lot of open source backlash.

Amazon is probably betting on a limited response from Google for a number of reasons and they are probably right, so the question becomes can Amazon produce a superior device?

One of the reasons I think they can is because I know Jon McCormack who is the VP of software for Kindle. I haven’t asked if this is his project, and he would not comment if it was but I know he has enough experience developing this type of thing to succeed.

Jon was at Liberate ( The failed Google TV of the dot.bomb ) where the team did some great things that were never seen because I was there with him. He is not the only guy that could do this but he has a lot of notches in his device belt so I know without a doubt that if he is the guy in charge that he could pull this off.

The only question I have is whether Amazons kindle DNA will get in the way of producing a truly useable all around product that appeals to users outside the book reader category, that though has more to do with politics than technology or design savvy.

The only real question is will Google ignore it, put down the rebellion quickly, or perhaps try and come up with a mutually beneficial scenario?

Let’s take a look at that in Part 2