Killer device at a killer price, if indeed the final product is as teased.
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Originally Posted by wizwor
Where does Google get the money to compete with this? What is their motivation?
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They protect future mobile ad space. Google's huge piles and piles and piles of cash comes from ads. Before Android, MS and then Apple were engaging in increasingly closed mobile ecospheres all the while technologists already realized that mobile tech was going to be the primary consumer tech of the future. An ad company can't get shut out of the primary consumer tech and live, so Google challenged that status quo, and at the same time, opened up an immediate boost to mobile ad revenue thru app ads. Though insubstantial as a source of income, it is a very, very fast growing source.
Honeycomb was Android Tablet 1.x and did about as well as Android Phone 1.x (or it would have, if gingerbread hadn't owned the tablet market). ICS is Android Tablet 2.x, and Android Phone 2.x is when Android began dominating phones. We'll see if the pattern holds. If it does, rest assured, Google has lots of financial motivation to maintain a decent share, though they don't really need to dominate to protect their ad space. They can make ad revenue on any platform so long as those other platforms are afraid to restrict internet access in favor of self-curated content.
At the same time, Google's retail competence is improving. They did a series of app sales over the holidays that I think means they're now serious about making the retail side of the android market a money maker. Initially, I'm pretty sure all Google's cut of market transactions ended up in the hands of carriers. They didn't have much incentive to boost that revenue. Now perhaps they do, and Amazon's proficiency with this seems to be giving Google the direction they need to make it work.