Apple’s Steamroller Advances

by Egatz

The Great and Powerful Jeff Bezos and his Kindle team at Amazon.com continue to do whatever they can in hopes of staunching the excitement over the next generation of Apple iPads. Rumor has it the second generation of the same 9.7-inch form factor will be released in the first quarter next year. A fully-functional computer, which also happens to be the best eReader on the market, will now be equipped with FaceTime technology. As if Apple needed to put yet more features into their eReader, FaceTime will put yet more distance between the one-trick Kindle and the iPad multi-functioning juggernaut.

A recent report from Nielsen has the iPad as tracking heavily with younger male users, and Kindle users being more wealthy. This is interesting, considering Kindles are less expensive than iPads. Since younger generations historically have embraced technology more quickly than older, wealthier invididuals, it’s not hard to see where this one is going to go.

©Apple, Inc.

Apple has long been a champion of open standards since at least OS X was introduced. They’ve done this again with both FaceTime, which they’ve established as an open standard video chat protocol, and they’ve done it with their eBooks, by making the iPad support the .epub format.

If Nielsen is correct, Amazon may temporarily be enjoying a wealthier demographic for the Kindle, but the young are swarming to the iPad because they can do a lot more on it than read public domain copies of Jack London. As Jim Morrison once monotoned, “they got the guns, but we got the numbers.”

Recently I was spammed with offers of refurbished Kindles from Amazon. Why anyone would want to buy a repaired plastic eReader that broke on someone else is beyond me, but there it is. The technology and prices are trickling down faster than any disillusioned back room architect of Reaganomics ever dreamed.

With colleges and universities embracing iPads for their students’ computing needs, plus the easy authoring environment of the .epub format, Bezos has reason to turn the propaganda hose on full between now and the second generation iPad’s release.

Even Amazon.com itself is riding the iPad wave by selling the device along side the Kindle. Things could be stranger in Amazon’s pursuit of dollars, and they are. The New York Times recently documented a bizarre alternative universe where Amazon was charging more for the eBook version of Fall of Giants by Ken Follett than they were for the hardcover edition. Retribution and negative press was swift and righteous, with Bezos being called a bait and switch artist, among other things. If anyone needed evidence American consumers not only see emperor’s new clothes, but are willing to pay more for it, there it is.

As Amazon continues to try to figure out eBook pricing and Kindle technology which stands a hope in hell of being as good as Apple’s, they have something else to worry about coming out of Cupertino. Now that Apple has proven the success of iOS 4, there’s more rumors of iPad technology being deployed in a smaller form factor. A seven-inch iPad would be a serious threat to smaller Kindles, and would appeal directly to people wanting to use the iPad primarily as an eBook reader, as opposed to everything else it can do.

In the final analysis, Apple is a technology company and Amazon.com is a retailer—a retailer with very deep pockets, able to throw considerable resources at creating an eReader of quality, but so far, they haven’t shown much for their efforts. Apple, however, as been in the game for a long time, and frankly, there wouldn’t be an Amazon.com if it wasn’t for Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and their desire to change the world in 1970s by building the first computer mortals could purchase and use in their own home. Speculation on whatever else Apple will unleash is speculation, but as they continue to ramp up on many fronts, the possibilities are deep and wide.

For Team Kindle, there is Trouble massing in the South. On Tuesday, Barclays Capital jacked up their Apple target to $385 a share. Their other numbers are no less daunting. As AppleInsider points out, Barclays expects to see Apple sell “40 million FaceTime-compatible iPhones in fiscal 2011, 15 million FaceTime-compatible iPods, and 8 million FaceTime-compatible iPads totaling a crazy 63 million FaceTime devices by the end of the fiscal year.” For 2012, they’re expecting a total of “over 150 million FaceTime enabled devices, which could prove conservative if FaceTime is put in all iPads and all Macs.” The future of live video phone calls they promised us since before the original Star Trek is here.

If Jeff Bezos needed another reason to both fear Apple’s iPad and begin drinking heavily, the announcement Walmart will start selling the Kindle-killer on 15 October should do it. They got the guns, but we got the numbers, indeed.