Why apps on Amazon Kindle won’t work
Yesterday’s announcement about Amazon opening up their Kindle to developers (with a real developer’s kit) in order for apps to start showing up on the device soon, really surprised me. To be honest, I didn’t think that Amazon would fall for Apples promotion strategy. So, let’s go through it step by step, shall we?
What does Apple actually do before they release a major new product? They are extremely secretive in order to fuel speculations. There is NO better way to monitor expectations, create curiosity, ensure a major hype around the product and avoid disappointments that can be derived beforehand from people’s discussions about the product. Now every now and then they leak some information (to one selected newspaper *cough* WSJ *cough*) to intensify the above described reactions and provoke panic in their competitors.
Well, Amazon fell for it. Big time. Before rumors started about the iTablet (which will be a shared media device btw, not just an e-reader) they never even thought about making apps available on Kindle. Why I assume that? Because the device is in no way designed for it. Who wants to use apps on a black and white screen? Yes, the screen with its E-Ink technology which loads way too slow and was obviously made to reproduce paper electronically – nothing else.
That’s a perfect example for a badly thought through, rash move which will get a company no where and just shows, that Amazon has nothing up their sleeves that could be a real threat to a new, more advanced product. One that could offer many more functions next to being an e-book reader. It’s bitter, but Amazon probably didn’t have a long term strategy for it’s Kindle beyond just being an e-book reader and their monopolistic position on the market allowed them to sell a product for a rather high price without putting too much effort and innovation into polishing the device. The iTablet might just do the same thing to the e-book market as the iPod did back then to the mp3-player market and that’s what Amazon is afraid of.
But honestly, this was just bound to happen. E-books and digital newspapers are clearly replacing print and the change is going to accelerate drastically over the next few years. Of course, the Kindle has helped greatly to speed up this development but the e-book market is still fairly untouched and many major companies are going to want their share, it’s just a question of when not if that’s going to happen.
Well, pretty soon apparently. Although I understand why Amazon panics, they should not forget that they have a major advantage by being the #1 online book store. Anyone just thinking about purchasing a book online will do so over Amazon (which also includes a large selection of e-books thanks to their early launch of an e-book reader device). That advantage should be used to strike partnerships in order to make sure that in the future most e-books are purchased through their store , instead of trying to make sure that most e-books are read on their device which – and I sincerely hope that this is as obvious to Amazon as it should be to anyone – they won’t ever be able to accomplish in the future.
Even for Apple it will be hard to dominate this market. But let’s see the iTablet in action first 
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Girl Goes Tech (GGT) is about a 26-year-old, female tech-addict exploring her geeky side and writing about social media, mobile trends and applications.