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Kindle Fire Case Write-Up

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is hardly the first tablet of its kind on the market. In fact,

there are very few things that differentiate it from other tablets. The things that do set it

apart give it competitive advantage.

Amazon really needs to look at its roots in order to position the Kindle Fire. When

the first Kindle came out, Amazon used its position as an ebook distributor to get people

to adopt the original Kindle. Amazon should be taking this approach as well to sell the

Kindle Fire. Amazon may not hold the majority of market share in tablets, but it does

hold more market share with its services that it offers under Amazon Prime, the

distribution of products, it’s free two day shipping and media services.

Amazon should take advantage of its streaming services in conjunction with

Prime to differentiate itself from the iPad. In addition, Amazon’s prices structure allows it

to be competitive with the iPad. Apple offers movies, books, and music for streaming,

but it is extremely clunky still and either must be paid for no advertising on streams, or

purchased each time in the case of movies, television shows and specific music

albums. Amazon should utilize its Prime streaming as a selling point for the Kindle Fire.

It should work seamlessly with the store and allows for instantaneous free streaming so

long as the user has Amazon Prime. In addition, if Amazon was to look back towards

ebooks as a possible strategy for the Kindle Fire, they should be trying to combine all

the selling points that made the original Kindle and apply it to a tablet that can compete

on a hardware level with the iPad. Purchasing or borrowing with the Prime library should

be able to show up on the Kindle without having to sync the way that iPads update.

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The price points of the Kindle Fire also allow it to be competitive with the iPad.

The hope is that the Kindle Fire gets used primarily as an ebook reader in addition to a

tablet, instead of it being a tablet first and then an ebook reader. With this being the

case, it is possible to go a bit lower than the iPads in terms of hardware specification

and therefore allow it to be offered at more affordable prices than the iPad. In addition,

Amazon is not only selling the hardware, so it is possible to take a smaller margin of

profit, or even a small loss, so long as they are able to turn a profit on people buying the

services and other products that they offer. These differences from the iPad allow them

to differentiate themselves in an already crowded tablet market.

The Kindle Fire, unfortunately, is on the same price as many android tablets, and

therefore needs to emphasize the services and products side even more than the Apple

products. In this case, the ebooks side really needs to be pushed, as the Google Play

store does not really offer this type of service, so trying to sell it as solely an ebook

reader to the android market would fare better than trying to sell it as just another tablet

with similar specifications to the others.

Amazon should be primarily trying to sell its Kindle Fire as the hardware

component to its services. They can use this to maintain competitive advantage as no

other tablet manufacturer will have direct streaming that has already been purchased to

an account. It should therefore try to be marketing especially to those with Amazon

Prime already as an incentive to use more of their subscription and likewise to Kindle

Fire owners to subscribe to Amazon Prime to complement their tablet usage.