It's NOT a competitor for the iPad as it is 7", no camera, and runs a very old version of Android (2.12 or older!!!) Also,
Amazon removed all the Google apps and you will only be able to load apps from
Amazon's store. It looks a lot like a clone of the Nook Color.
Assuming the TechCrunch article is fully accurate (The writer spent an hour with a Verification Test Unit and left many questions unanswered or in doubt), the comparison to the Nook Color is more or less accurate. There are good reasons for that.
First and foremost,
Amazon's most significant competition at this point is the Nook Color ("The Tablet for Readers" is the B&N tagline.) Rather than take on the iPad directly,
Amazon will leverage their huge customer base (25 million Kindles shipped in 2011) to solidify their offerings in that space.
The seven inch form factor, though not yet a winner in the pure tablet space has been a huge hit in the eReader market. Moving to a 10" form factor effectively abandons that critical feature and leaves the combo eReader/Tablet market to the Nook.
The absence of a camera (if that turns out to be the case) doesn't surprise me. Smartphones routinely get bad reviews for their cameras and tablets get even worse reviews (iPad included). I'm not sure why
Amazon would want to be dragged across the coals for a feature that most users don't care about.
The comments on the TechCrunch article from Android fans are, not surprisingly, heavily negative. But that view ignores the fact that Kindle fans (much like Apple fans) place a lot of trust in the
Amazon brand. The fact that it doesn't use the latest Android platform (if that turns out to be the case) is largely irrelevant to those buyers. The miniscule proportion of the market for whom a true "Android" experience matters means very little to
Amazon.
I am somewhat surprised that the Kindle 4 (or whatever it's going to be called) doesn't have 3G support out of the box (if, in fact, that turns out to be true.) The problem, however, is that 3G support on the Kindle is free. That will be impossible for a device that can be used for internet access on an ongoing basis so I suspect that
Amazon is trying to work a deal with one or more cellular carriers that splits the difference between "free" 3G of the current Kindle and the $30 per month start/stop plan offered for the iPad.
As far as the price is concerned, I suspect that $249 is exactly right. It has become obvious that the sweet spot for smartphones is just about $200 (subsidized). A slight bump for a tablet that still puts it at half the cost of an iPad is about what I think consumers will expect. And
Amazon has no incentive to undercut the price of the B&N Nook (which has sold very well) with a device with comparable specs from a much stronger brand.
The TechCrunch article implies that this is just one model in a larger
Amazon tablet strategy (with a 10" model to follow in 2012.) I suspect that is true (though I'm not sure a 10" model is necessarily the next step.) Instead, I suspect that
Amazon is banking on a combo backlit/e-ink display coming along in the next year, or so. (Doesn't matter much to folks like me but to a significant portion of the Kindle community the paper-like display of e-ink for reading is a crucial sales point.) That might be a 10" device, but I suspect that it would be even better in a 7" format.
Bottom line? From one perspective it's not going to be an iPad competitor. But
Amazon doesn't need an iPad killer. They do need a "Nook Killer." And they need to begin to extend the Kindle product line in a way that supports a long-term strategy as the tablet market matures.