The rumors surrounding Amazon’s planned Kindle announcement in New York on Wednesday have reached epic proportions, with the latest reports suggesting the company will reveal not one, but three new Kindle models at the event. But one thing is certain: Amazon is lining up content providers in print and video to make a run at Apple’s dominance over the tablet market.
On Monday, Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer announced it had reached a deal with Fox to make over 2,000 Fox movie and TV titles available for streaming on Amazon Prime later this fall, bringing the total number of titles available at Amazon Prime to 11,000.
“[We] will continue to add more of our customers’ favorite movies and TV shows to Prime instant videos,” said Steve Oliver, director of Video at Amazon.com, in a press release.
The $79-a-year Amazon Prime service was originally launched in 2005 to offer frequent customers free two-day shipping and discounted one-day shipping. In February, Amazon announced it was upgrading the service to provide instant streaming of over 5,000 titles to computers and TVs, and the library has grown from there. Critically, though, Amazon Prime isn’t available on tablet devices – yet.
As PaidContent reported:
“Asked if the deal would extend to tablets, an Amazon rep reminded me that Amazon doesn’t offer instant video on mobile…true but does Amazon need a new deal with Fox–or other content providers–to offer mobile access? No answer to that but it’s hard to believe a company led by the canny Jeff Bezos hasn’t figured out a way to ensure at least some streaming video access to buyers of an Amazon tablet, like the one we expect to have announced in NYC Wednesday at a press conference”
Also on Monday, All Things D reported that Amazon had secured deals with three major magazine and online publishers: Meredith Corp., Hearst and Conde Nast.
(Meredith, Hearst and Conde Nast all have made their content available through the Apple App Store as well.)
The Amazon deals reportedly will see the publishers selling their content through an Amazon magazine stand with terms similar to the ones that Apple imposes on publishers in its App Store Newsstand: a 70-30 split, with 30 percent of sales revenue going to the tech company, in this case, Amazon.
Notably, however, All Things D‘s sources said the Amazon deals were more flexible as far as the exact revenue split, allowing publishers more leeway in their negotiations.
That’s an obvious contrast with Apple, which initially angered publishers by requiring that the lowest-cost subscriptions be sold through the App Store or risk having their mobile apps bounced entirely, even motivating some, such as The Financial Times, to set up HTML5 websites for the expressed purpose of circumnavigating the Apple App Store. In June, a few days after The Finacial Times released its HTML5 apps, Apple backed away from that policy in June, though it still collects 30 percent across-the-board.
As for the tech specs of Amazon’s new device or devices, the jury is still out on exactly what, and how many products the company will announce on Wednesday. The most popularly cited reports, from TechCrunch’s MG Siegler, suggest that one new Kindle will take center stage: Called “The Kindle Fire,” the device is anticipated to be a full-color, 7-inch tablet based off RIM’s Playbook tablet, running an older version of Android OS than 2.2. It will reportedly cost $250 and will be available for purchase in November.
It is undoubtedly aimed to compete head-to-head with the iPad in a way that previous Kindle models never could, hampered by their monochrome e-Ink screens and limited Web-browsing capabilities.
But Apple Insider also reported that “Amazon is set to release two new Kindle black-and-white e-ink models,” at the same time as the Kindle Fire.
The low-end version, codenamed Tequila, may cost as little as $99 and will feature a Freescale i.MX515 processor with an integrated controller that should provide “better system design and lower cost.”
The high-end Kindle, which is codenamed Whitney, will sport the same processor, while also including features missing on the Tequila, such as touch controls, 3G connectivity and a speaker.
Still, Amazon is facing stiff competition in the iPad 2, which costs $499 and yet cornered 66 percent of total global tablet shipments in the second quarter, according to a report from research firm IDC (via TechFlash). But e-reader shipments, a separate market, were still dominated by Amazon, which had 52 percent of the market with 2.7 million units shipped.
Amazon has released five versions of its e-ereader device since the first iteration was unveiled in November 2008. Its latest, the Kindle 3, which debuted on August 27, 2010, was the online-retailer’s best selling product in 2010 with 7.1 million units moved (even outselling “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows,” according to the company.)
Some analysts project that this year’s sales will be lower, to the tune of 2 to 5 million units, due to the fact that the introduction of new Kindle models will come late in the game, toward the holiday shopping season.
Full disclosure: I was a reporter at iPad newspaper The Daily from November 2010 to August 2011. The Daily is a product of News Corporation, which also owns Fox.
