In an almost mouth watering scenario, for both consumers and tech journalists alike, Apple and Amazon are set to go head-to-head over control of the Tablet market, and regardless of who wins, the ultimate winners will be the consumer.
According to reports this morning from the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is set to release a Tablet by mid-October, which is also set to be an Android-based device (possibly running on Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich as its known)- meaning that it will run on the fastest growing OS in the universe and a platform, which now controls 42 percent of the operating system market.
Apple, which for its part has sold well over 20 million iPads this year alone is hardly going to lose any sleep over Amazon and its new little ‘Tablet that could’, however since both companies compete over digital content sales, this will be another reason to pump up their respective marketing volumes for Tablet devices and of course, more competition usually means cheaper prices at the checkout for us consumers.
But it’s not going to be all smooth sailing for Amazon in 2011. Not only will the company be facing competition for its Kindle e-reader from a new device that Sony is set to release but it may well find that Samsung, Google and possibly even Motorola may feel a little bit of heat from Amazon in the Tablet market and as such, the company that started off as an online bookseller may well discover it has more enemies than it can point a stick at.
Furthermore, the Tablet and e-readers markets are not the same kettle of fish and as such, Amazon will find the Tablet market a much harder nut to crack.
However you don’t become Amazon.com by going to water at the first sign of hardship and as such, the second half of 2011 is going to be interesting times indeed for technophiles of all persuasions.
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