Speculation on an Amazon iPad competitor
I'd bet on Amazon releasing a true tablet, competing more directly with the iPad than the Kindle currently does, in the possibly-near future. Andy Ihnatko nailed it last month: … I don't know why it has taken most of us this long to figure this out, but it makes a lot of sense.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Amazon-tablet guess is moving from fringe to consensus among commentators: after NYTimes' Bits asked in March whether Amazon was building an Android-powered Kindle, Silicon Alley Insider argued days later that Amazon could quietly become a huge tablet player without anyone noticing, and now Marco Arment at Marco.org puts money on it, citing Andy Ihnatko's earlier framing that the answer was obvious all along.
What makes the timing plausible rather than idle chatter is what Amazon shipped in the weeks before this post: a confirmed Cloud Player streaming launch on March 29 and an April 12 letter telling music labels its Cloud Drive locker needs no license — the media-delivery plumbing a tablet would need, arriving alongside the year-old storefront rivalry between iBooks and the Kindle app on Apple's own device.
First-order effects
- If the rumored tablet is real, Amazon would field a two-front lineup against Apple — e-ink Kindle for readers plus a color tablet competing head-on with the iPad — splitting its current single-product posture toward Apple.
- Apple's iBooks-versus-Kindle contest on the iPad would gain a mirror image: an Amazon tablet running Amazon's store, ending Apple's position as the only hardware maker hosting both bookshops.
Second-order effects
- Music labels are already negotiating with Amazon from weakness — the company told them on April 12 that Cloud Drive requires no license — so a new Amazon screen would deepen their dependence on terms set unilaterally by their biggest retailer.
- An Android-based Amazon tablet would give publishers and app developers a second mass-market tablet platform whose economics are set by a retailer, pressuring pricing across the emerging tablet content market.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to tablets stratifying into two models: Apple's premium integrated device versus retailer-subsidized hardware built as a conduit to media sales — a structure where the device is a loss-leader for the storefront behind it.
- If Amazon's license-free approach to cloud media stands, hardware makers bundling lockers and streams could erode labels' per-copy licensing leverage, pushing the industry toward access-based deals.
The trend: Tablets are becoming storefronts first and computers second, with Amazon positioned to turn retail and cloud-media muscle into the first credible challenge to Apple's integrated iPad model.