Pinboard (guardiantech)

Tablet Market Update: December 2012 >> Chitika Insights

guardiantech — 2012-12-31T22:32:28+00:00

Covering the period from 8 to 14 December:

As seen in the above graph, users of the Kindle Fire family of tablets constituted 4.88 impressions per 100 iPad impressions in December – a 4.25% share of all tablet Web traffic as a whole. This is an increase of nearly 20% from Kindle Fire’s 3.57% share observed in our last Tablet market update.
The Samsung Galaxy family of tablets also experienced a usage share increase, albeit less impressive than the Kindle Fire, growing from 2.36% to a 2.65% share of all domestic tablet traffic.
The Google Nexus family of tablets continued to see usage growth, with its share rising from 0.91% in November to 1.06% in December – an increase of more than 15%.
Despite these gains by some of the bigger players in the tablet marketplace, there has been a negligible impact to Apple’s dominant usage share. Users of Apple’s tablets still generate over 87% of US and Canadian tablet Web traffic, coming down from just over 88% one month ago.

It's hardly encouraging news for the Surface, either. Though it is at least there. Just ahead of the HP Touchpad (discontinued August 2011)..

Kindle Fire HD Teardown >> iFixit

guardiantech — 2012-09-17T21:26:01+00:00

Chips from Samsung, Elpida, Texa Instruments - plus a big screen and big battery. That's it, basically.

Don't buy the Amazon Kindle Fire HD hype >> Seeking Alpha

guardiantech — 2012-09-16T21:06:32+00:00

Why would you want to buy a 7-inch Kindle Fire HD with a laggy, old weak performance dual-core Texas Instruments processor, only 50,000 apps in the Amazon app-store, ad-supported home-screen and lock-screen, and a dumbed-down user interface with less operating system functionality?...
...Compared to a Google Nexus 7 tablet with a speedy quad-core processor, 600,000 apps in the Google Play store, access to the Kindle app, full Android 4.1 operating system functionality, and no-ads - for about the same price? (Google Nexus 7 comes with a $25 content credit currently, and a wall charger, while the Kindle Fire HD doesn't have a wall charger, but has more built-in flash memory. All-in-all, in the same ballpark price if you net things out.)

It's a very thorough takedown. And that's before he gets into his expectations for an "iPad mini". (The writer discloses that he's shorting Amazon. However, the points made aren't dependent on a stock position.

Quick First Look: Kindle Fire HD 7" >> YouTube

guardiantech — 2012-09-10T21:52:52+00:00

Seeing it in action, it looks... laggy. (The British press hasn't yet had a hands-on.)

ChangeWave survey shows momentum for Amazon >> ChangeWave

guardiantech — 2012-02-02T21:49:56+00:00

Survey time:

ChangeWave asked 254 new Kindle Fire owners a series of questions regarding their overall satisfaction and key likes and dislikes, to gauge their reaction to the new tablet device. Customer Satisfaction. When asked how satisfied they are with their new tablet device, better than one-in-two Kindle Fire owners (54%) say they are Very Satisfied. Another 38% say they are Somewhat Satisfied. In previous ChangeWave surveys we've found that the percentage of tablet owners who say they are Very Satisfied with a particular device is highly predictive of future demand for that device. So how does the Amazon tablet rating match up against other tablet devices? While the 54% Very Satisfied rating for the Kindle Fire is considerably below the 74% rating of the industry leading Apple iPad*, it is higher than the 49% average rating for all of the other tablet devices combined.

The 254 sample is probably large enough to be representative of 4m owners. The satisfaction for "other" tablets was 39% in a November survey by ChangeWave. That's pretty low.

Kindle sales >> Amazon Media Room

guardiantech — 2011-12-16T23:19:16+00:00

"Amazon.com today announced that Kindle devices remain the hottest products this holiday season – for the third week in a row, customers are purchasing well over 1 million Kindle devices per week, and Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago. To learn more about the all-new Kindle family – the $79 Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch, $149 Kindle Touch 3G and the $199 Kindle Fire – visit www.amazon.com/kindle. “Kindle Fire is the most successful product we’ve ever launched – it’s the bestselling product across all of Amazon for 11 straight weeks, we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand. In fact, demand is accelerating – Kindle Fire sales increased week over week for each of the past three weeks." Amazon has never specified Kindle sales before. It hasn't really here either, but it's a lot more than it has ever said previously.

Amazon Kindle Fire Faces Critics and Remedies Are Promised >> NYTimes.com

guardiantech — 2011-12-12T07:29:39+00:00

"A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing. The touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky"

Exclusive: Amazon Kindle Fire coming to UK in January >> Know Your Mobile

guardiantech — 2011-12-07T16:42:57+00:00

...But Amazon officially not saying anything.

Editorial: My first days with the Kindle Fire (and my first tablet) >> The Verge Forums

guardiantech — 2011-11-28T21:17:38+00:00

Really good review by a reader at The Verge. The takeaway: the Fire does all the things you might want to do with a tablet, if you don't have any particular apps you want to use on it.

Is this really the tablet everyone's talking about? >> Wired

guardiantech — 2011-11-14T06:37:25+00:00

Wired isn't aflame: "The Fire isn’t a dud, but its real-world performance and utility match neither the benchmarks of public expectation, nor the standards set by the world’s best tablets. "The Fire’s 7-inch, 1024×600 screen is too small for many key tablet activities. The Fire’s processor, a 1GHz dual-core chip, appears all but insufficient for fluid, silky-smooth web browsing, an area where I found performance to be preternaturally slow. And unlike most of its tablet competitors, the Fire lacks a camera, 3G data connectivity, and a slot for removable storage. "As an assembly of physical components, the Fire lives at the bottom of the tablet food chain — and this limits what the Fire can actually do as a piece of mobile hardware. But all those consumers who pre-ordered the Fire knew this going in, right?"

Survey: 26% of likely Fire buyers delaying iPad purchase - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech

guardiantech — 2011-11-09T22:24:15+00:00

"In a note to clients issued Thursday, RBC's Mike Abramsky shares the results of a ChangeWave survey of 2,600 early adopter types. Two key findings: 5% of those surveyed said they had pre-ordered or were very likely to buy Amazon's (AMZN) new Kindle Fire, exceeding the 4% who said they were very likely to buy the original iPad in 2010; 26% of those 5% said they would delay or put on hold the purchase of a new iPad." From the graphic (you need to click the link), 47% were looking at buying other gadgets. Overall, 27% weren't looking to buy any other sort of gadget (eg laptop, netbook, other tablet, etc). Some 'early adopters' they are, then. Even so, bears out the idea that the game is between Amazon and Apple.

Amazon Building Millions More Kindle Fire Tablets Than Planned >> Business Insider

guardiantech — 2011-10-26T07:41:14+00:00

What UK?