Yesterday, we discovered that the Kindle Fire was having "issues" connecting to the Internet, now we learn that the low-priced virtual cash register for Amazon is not the optimal user experience but should overtake the Android tablet market, anyway.
The Kindle Fire could capture 50 percent of the Android tablet market next year, NPD Group analyst Stephen King reported.
Another analyst, Petter King at Strategy Analytics, noted that the Kindle Fire is sales generator for Amazon.com products, content, video, movies and music. “The Kindle Fire acts as a check-out station, for Amazon purchases,” said Peter King who also noted that Amazon has an ecosystem of content and services.
Some analysts have concluded the reason why the Kindle Fire is an iPad killer is "It's the price, stupid."
The Kindle Fire costs over $200 to make while the Kindle Fire sells for $199 at Amazon.com and it is expected to be beat-out every other non-iPad tablet in market share.
The best features of the e Kindle Fire are the dual-core processor, free Amazon Cloud storage, cloud accelerated mobile browser and of course the $199 price. Previously reviewed shortcomings of the Kindle Fire include it uses Android 2.3(not a tablet OS) and lacks Bluetooth, cellular data, a camera and GPS. The Kindle Fire touchscreen is only 7 inches..
The Android 2.3 OS was designed for mobile smartphones, not full size tablets. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has the full features designed for tablets.
Jakob Nielsen's review of the UX (User Experience) showed that mobile websites looked the best on the Kindle Fire, which makes sense because the OS UI(User Interface) was designed for mobile smartphones. The Android 2.2 operating system also failed on the now defunct 7" Dell Streak tablet.
There are cheap Android tablets available that cost less than $100, but buyers return them to the store because they are “rubbish” and lack ecosystem support, says King.
Jakob Nielsen tested Kindle Fire users and reported back what is in general a problem with Android 2.3 for tablets. Android 3.2 Honeycomb was designed for tablets.
The problems reported by Jakob Nielsen revolve around the size of the tablet, websites are not optimized for the 7" inch screen and general ease of use. Here are some of the problems he noticed:
- Wrong taps and frequent tap errors.
- Designs made for 10" screen make using it on a 7" inch harder.
- Mobile sites worked better and Amazon, Google and other search providers should automatically enable mobile websites for the Kindle Fire.
- The Kindle Fire is heavy and unpleasant to hold for long periods of time. It lacks physical buttons for turning the page.
- The previous liquid ink displays and hard buttons on Kindle worked better for fiction.
- The Kindle Fire should be better for reading color magazines but the magazine experience is misearble.
- App use is not efficient because the Kindle Fire lacks physical buttons.
- There isn't good finger feedback."The Silk web browser lets users select individual words within the text in dropdown menus. In fact, it's so easy to do this that users often selected words when they wanted to activate a menu option. If I were given to conspiracy theories, I'd say that Amazon deliberately designed a poor web browsing user experience to keep Fire users from shopping on competing sites.
- 7-inch screens are too small to easily browse full websites, and yet too big to carry with you at all times like a mobile phone. When designed right, the 7-inch user experience is richer and more pleasant than a mobile phone UX.