Amazon's Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I've Seen It, Played With It.
It's called simply the “Amazon Kindle”. But it's not like any Kindle you've seen before. It displays content in full color. It has a 7-inch capacitive touch screen. And it runs Android.
Context & Ripple Effects
March reporting had already raised the prospect of an Android-based Kindle, while Amazon was testing a shopping site designed for tablet screens. The reported 7-inch color touchscreen device gives those parallel efforts a shared hardware endpoint.
The move also places Kindle beyond the e-book reader category at a moment when Amazon and Apple had already pushed Microsoft to discontinue its Reader app. Amazon’s existing control over the Kindle publishing platform makes the hardware choice consequential for publishers as well as readers.
First-order effects
- Amazon can extend the Kindle brand from a dedicated reading device into a full-color, touch-driven Android product, broadening the kinds of content it can present.
- Android gains a prominent Amazon-branded hardware outlet, adding distribution beyond smartphones as the platform’s U.S. smartphone share reached 40% in July.
Second-order effects
- Amazon’s tablet-optimized shopping-site testing can turn the device into a more capable storefront for Amazon’s retail catalog, tying hardware adoption to commerce rather than device sales alone.
- Publishers using Amazon’s Kindle platform face a distribution channel that can accommodate richer color and touch-oriented formats while remaining under Amazon’s platform rules.
Third-order effects
- If Amazon sustains the Android-based Kindle approach, the competitive boundary shifts from dedicated e-readers toward integrated hardware, content, and retail ecosystems.
- The Kindle’s evolution signals that control of the reader relationship is becoming less separable from control of the operating system and storefront.
The trend: E-reading is converging with tablet computing as platform owners pair inexpensive touch hardware with proprietary content and commerce channels.