Amazon announces: Echo

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Rizla

1) Losing a boat-load of money is what's wrong (see the Fire phone. Epic duh.)
2) Put the H2O in bricks and mortar stores in the US and lets see how many people want it.

1- Define "boatload of money" for a company with $4B on hand and Billions more on tap from unused lines of credit and stock value. Unlike other companies that sit on the profits, Amazon puts theirs back to work. Sometimes it makes them top dog in ebooks or number two-ish in US tablets, sometimes they miss. You can't win if you don't play and you can't play without risk. It's called entrepreneurial capitalism. You play, you learn, you try again. Everybody loses a few; just ask Apple about Pippin, Microsoft about BOB, Sony about eVilla... All trying to move into new arenas.

Big. Frakking. Deal.

2- kobo can't get Rakuten to put the H2O on their website and they're going to get B&M stores to stock them? If their own parent company won't support them...?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Rizla

1) Losing a boat-load of money is what's wrong (see the Fire phone. Epic duh.)
2) Put the H2O in bricks and mortar stores in the US and lets see how many people want it.

Putting the H2O into a B&M store in the US is all up to Kobo, and really truly is not part of a plot by Amazon, I promise. Or do you think that Kobo is somehow part of Amazon's plot?

Shari

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

1- Define "boatload of money" for a company with $4B on hand and Billions more on tap from unused lines of credit and stock value. Unlike other companies that sit on the profits, Amazon puts theirs back to work. Sometimes it makes them top dog in ebooks or number two-ish in US tablets, sometimes they miss. You can't win if you don't play and you can't play without risk. It's called entrepreneurial capitalism. You play, you learn, you try again. Everybody loses a few; just ask Apple about Pippin, Microsoft about BOB, Sony about eVilla... All trying to move into new arenas.

Big. Frakking. Deal.

Judging by the recent drop in Amazon share value, it seems investors disagree.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

2- kobo can't get Rakuten to put the H2O on their website and they're going to get B&M stores to stock them? If their own parent company won't support them...?

Irrelevant. This says nothing about what consumers would buy, given the chance. It's obvious that many users would be drawn to a 6.8" screen, if it was available in stores. Add to that that it can be made cheaper than Amazon's smaller 6" Voyage, and it would clearly outsell the over-priced Voyage.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Rizla

This says nothing about what consumers would buy, given the chance.

Ah, the good old hypothetical!
"Everybody would buy it if only (blankety-blank-blank)", applies to a zillion products and failed kickstarters. The trick is the blankety-blank-blank, more generally called "execution".

Except that if Kobo doesn't bother to get their toys in front of buyers they don't get the chance to even think of it, much less crossshop it against products available at B&M, on a heavily-trafficed website, and occasionally on TV. AKA, Kindles and Nooks.

As I said above: you can't win if you don't play and Kobo really isn't making much of a play in the US.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I listen to my huge music collection through the built-in speakers of a 1st gen Fire HD or through a Sansa Clip Zip hooked up to an iPod speaker dock

The Clip Zip will work in an iPod dock?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Ah, the good old hypothetical!
"Everybody would buy it if only (blankety-blank-blank)", applies to a zillion products and failed kickstarters. The trick is the blankety-blank-blank, more generally called "execution".

Except that if Kobo doesn't bother to get their toys in front of buyers they don't get the chance to even think of it, much less crossshop it against products available at B&M, on a heavily-trafficed website, and occasionally on TV. AKA, Kindles and Nooks.

As I said above: you can't win if you don't play and Kobo really isn't making much of a play in the US.

You're not addressing the key point here: Amazon's lack of product focus. Kobo's success with the H2O and its larger screen, despite its failure to penetrate the high-street, underlines the fact that the market would embrace a slightly larger screen at a price-point comparable or lower than the over-priced Voyage. It's obvious, though apparently not to Amazon or yourself. Instead Amazon loses a boatload of cash on an overpriced phone in a saturated market, and now is flirting with an over-priced speaker

[KimberlyFDR]

It seems like they're moving more toward Echo invites soon? The ad has been taken off the front page of Amazon when I'm logged in or logged out and the product can only be found with a keyword search. Still goes to the same invite page, but it's no longer front and center when you arrive at Amazon.

[Barty]

I predict this will be a bigger success than the fire phone :-)

I don't like talking to devices. It feels like talking to those automated answering systems.

Operator. Operator. Let me talk to a live person!!!

<hello sir how may I help you today>

No I mean a live person in the US!

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

The Clip Zip will work in an iPod dock?

Audio in port via male-to-male cable.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Rizla

You're not addressing the key point here: Amazon's lack of product focus.

What product focus? On what?
Amazon is 100 different companies!
(AWS, AUDIBLE, CREATESPACE, AMAZON PUBLISHING, Goodreads, Comixology, LAB126, Ivona, Liquavista, Kiva, Alexa, A9, Twitch, Zappos, Diapers.com and on and on...)
Here:
http://www.quora.com/List-of-all-Ama...s-subsidiaries

http://lists10.com/wp-content/upload...zon-brands.png

What you call lack of focus is what others consider Amazon's scope.
It is their insurance against the market changing and leaving them behind.
Like Borders or Sony or Blackberry or Kodak or Lotus or Word Perfect or any of a thousand companies that focused on the next quarter so tightly they focused themselves out of business.

They are a conglomerate like GE or Toshiba or Mitsubishi. They just happen to be focused on the consumer and services space more than old-school manufacturing. Retail and books is just a tiny part of the business. And so is the phone.

The stuff that offends you so much is from Lab126 whose mission is precisely to produce consumer electronics hardware. eReaders and tablets, yes, but also media streamers and (soon) home automation. If their Bluetooth speaker/PDA annoys you so much, get some pepto for when the voice actuated thermostat or door lock or TV set or 3D printer comes out. Or something else entirely. They own a toolkit of technologies ranging from voice recognition to color displays that they are looking to make money off any way they can. Whether you or I or stock speculators approve of it or not.

Kobo is a one note company. They sell ereaders and other people's ebooks to some success in some markets and less in others. When they trued to pkay in tablets they thudded and people got fired. Now they're back where they were when Indigo flipped them.

They have to focus because that's all they have. They succeed through partners where they find them and flounder when they don't because Rakuten has shown little interest in doing anything special for them.

Expecting Amazon to go after the same niches as Kobo isn't reasonable; Kobo lives and dies with their hardware. Amazon has other fish to fry in addition to the ones already in the pan. More importantly, it isn't wise for Amazon to he chasing after every last hobbyist buyer out there.

There is always the danger that they might *succeed*.

[tubemonkey]

If we're allowed to change the wake name, I wanna change mine to "talking cylinder"

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If we're allowed to change the wake name, I wanna change mine to "talking cylinder"

The video hints that you can.

If I had a use for one, I'd call it Multivac.

[KimberlyFDR]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If we're allowed to change the wake name, I wanna change mine to "talking cylinder"

I mentioned in my blog that there is sure to be a whole host of J.A.R.V.I.S. Echoes out in the world soon (if they do allow us to change the name as promised).

[shalym]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The video hints that you can.

If I had a use for one, I'd call it Multivac.

I'd call it Dora. I may have to get one, just so I can walk around my house and talk to Dora, like Lazarus and everyone else on Tertius did. Of course, then I'd have to get another one and name her Minerva so Dora didn't get lonely when no humans were home. Oooh...and how could I forget their male companion Mike!

...and now I'm just exposing what a sad, sad geek I am. I can not get one of these things.

Shari

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The video hints that you can.

If I had a use for one, I'd call it Multivac.

Reminds me of Univac, which in turn reminded me of the robot Uniblab (a pun of Univac) from the Jetsons. Maybe I'll call it Uniblab instead