Amazon’s Kindle Fire Now Has Over Half The U.S. Android Tablet Market

[Jessica Lares]

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/26/com...the-mindshare/

On the same day that Amazon will be releasing its quarterly earnings, some research from comScore underscores just how far the company has come since launching its Kindle Fire tablet in November 2011.

The researchers say that as of February 2012, Amazon’s Kindle Fire now accounts for 54.4 percent of all Android tablets in the U.S. Given how many different models of Android tablets there are out in the market at the moment, that gives it a strong lead over the rest of the field: the whole range of Samsung Galaxy Tab tablets, added together, only accounted for 15.4 percent of the market, with the Xoom following at seven percent, comScore said.

[carld]

Interesting read, thanks for the link.

Looks like the only two really successful companies to market tablets--Apple and Amazon--by no coincidence have the capability to also provide a store with plenty of apps and media with which to populate those tablets. I doubt any other companies could compete in the tablet market with Apple and Amazon at this point, with the possible exception of Google, and even Google would be hard pressed to compete. Hats off to Amazon!

I don't consider Microsoft as a competitor as they would not release their own tablets, just the software. I do hope Windows 8 starts the transition from lackluster iOS and Android tablets to powerful workhorse tablets.

[RainingLemur]

That's a lot of fondleslabs. (Jeez, that term is addicting)

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by RainingLemur

That's a lot of fondleslabs. (Jeez, that term is addicting)

[wizwor]

For Microsoft to compete, they have to improve the Zune Store. I believe they will buy B&N and Netflix for this purpose.

As I said earlier I really don't think Microsoft will try to compete in the tablet hardware arena. Why should they? They can simply put out a good tablet OS and let nature take its course. With a good OS for tablets, the hardware giants will finally be able to compete.

Even Steve Wozniak says he likes the Windows phone OS better than iOS and Android. I think there are a lot of us who are really interested in a tablet OS that is somewhere between the too simple and way too closed iOS and the open but overly complex and way too inefficient and flaky Android. And the idea of running essentially the same powerful and graceful OS on a desktop, a laptop, and a tablet is very appealing to many. And on top of that it will be great to use most of the same peripheral devices on all three without having to rely on kluge third-party adapters.

[wizwor]

same reason they compete in the console world despite having their OS on the most popular gaming platform.

[Jessica Lares]

The problem I see in general is that Windows 8 is nothing more than a layer on top of Window 7. It's not like iOS where the barebones of OS X is still there and the rest has been stripped out. Instead of using their very, very good Windows Embedded framework like they do on Windows Phone/Zune, they've just piled junk on top of existing junk with security tweaks and the like.

Originally Posted by Jessica Lares

The problem I see in general is that Windows 8 is nothing more than a layer on top of Window 7. It's not like iOS where the barebones of OS X is still there and the rest has been stripped out. Instead of using their very, very good Windows Embedded framework like they do on Windows Phone/Zune, they've just piled junk on top of existing junk with security tweaks and the like.

This is not correct IMO. Windows 8 is much more than just an eye candy type of front end. Users may or may not like the new UI, but there IS a lot of new substance under the hood. If you look at the publicly released information about it (see this article, that shows the architecture), includes a new fundamental runtime layer called "WinRT." There are various new UI-layer development options, but under the hood, the WinRT layer is a completely new, OO way of doing things (as opposed to the old-school calling of Win32 layer). To quote this article: "WinRT isn’t another abstraction layer; it resides directly on top of the kernel just like the Win32 API. This marks the first major break in the core of Windows since Win32 was introduced in 1993 with Windows NT. WinRT represents a new application execution environment with semantics that are very different than Win32."

And this article makes a similar point:
"WinRT (the new Windows Run Time) is not a replacement for Silverlight or .NET, it's a replacement for Win32. And that means that it's the new native runtime for Windows, and not a managed code layer that sits higher on the stack."

[Harry_Y]

I would love to see Amazon use a more standard
interface on the Fire; it really is a nice device.

[Anabran]

"I would love to see Amazon use a more standard
interface on the Fire; it really is a nice device."

I am running the Go Launcher Ex& rotating wall paper as my home screen on My Kindle Ffire WITHOUT ROOTING
I never see the stock interface as I use sideloaded E-reader apps for books
I am running 84 android apps.
I see no need to root my device at all.

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by maximus83

This is not correct IMO. Windows 8 is much more than just an eye candy type of front end. Users may or may not like the new UI, but there IS a lot of new substance under the hood. If you look at the publicly released information about it (see this article, that shows the architecture), includes a new fundamental runtime layer called "WinRT." There are various new UI-layer development options, but under the hood, the WinRT layer is a completely new, OO way of doing things (as opposed to the old-school calling of Win32 layer). To quote this article: "WinRT isn’t another abstraction layer; it resides directly on top of the kernel just like the Win32 API. This marks the first major break in the core of Windows since Win32 was introduced in 1993 with Windows NT. WinRT represents a new application execution environment with semantics that are very different than Win32."

And this article makes a similar point:
"WinRT (the new Windows Run Time) is not a replacement for Silverlight or .NET, it's a replacement for Win32. And that means that it's the new native runtime for Windows, and not a managed code layer that sits higher on the stack."

But I can still run pretty much any app that works on Windows 3.1 beyond on Windows 8, which is my point. They needed to completely ditch the backwards compatibility which makes Windows prone to security issues in the first place. The fact that Windows Mobile and Windows Phone use Windows Embedded instead of just Windows makes them much more secured.

WinRT will be ditching that old framework, but the versions that run on Intel won't.

[Jessica Lares]

Originally Posted by Anabran

I am running the Go Launcher Ex& rotating wall paper as my home screen on My Kindle Ffire WITHOUT ROOTING
I never see the stock interface as I use sideloaded E-reader apps for books
I am running 84 android apps.
I see no need to root my device at all.

Why do you have ROM Manager then if I may ask? And Superuser at that.

[Harry_Y]

Originally Posted by Anabran

I am running the Go Launcher Ex& rotating wall paper as my home screen on My Kindle Ffire WITHOUT ROOTING
I never see the stock interface as I use sideloaded E-reader apps for books
I am running 84 android apps.
I see no need to root my device at all.

If you press and hold the Phone, Person, etc icons on the bottom row you
can change them (not sure if you knew that). it makes it look less like a phone.