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Originally Posted by
melgross 
To take the last first, it's not proper to compare it to a phone. This is being sold as a tablet, and it's much bigger than even the largest phones. That said, it's pretty bad. I've tried it as a book reader, and I didn't find it to be even as good as a regular Kindle, and far worse than my iPad, even the lower Rez earlier models, except in weight, of course.
Well, from what I've seen, and from those I've spoken to, most kids wouldn't want a Kindle instead of an iPad. I'm assuming that by Kindle, you mean the extremely limited book readers. But even a Fire is very limited. A very recent survey, or report, said that of all mobile gaming, something that kids especially are interested in, 84% is done using iOS devices. Not much room for the Fire there.
I compare it to comparably priced devices that fill the same niche (mobile entertainment). The iPad 2 is $399. The iPod Touch $199. The Kindle $199.
By Kindle I mean the Fire. I have always meant the Fire. I have no idea why on earth you are even vaguely confused on the subject.
Comparing the Kindle to the iPod Touch is more than reasonable. They occupy the exact same price point and are the same general category: personal entertainment device.
Many many parents are making this very comparison.
The iPod Touch took a beating too:
"The iPhone has beaten analysts' estimates, as the iPad: Apple has sold 15.43 million units during the holidays . It doubles its sales in one year (+ 110.56%), an encouraging figure: now it takes three times more than iPad Mac. The iPod knows a path opposite: it is sold 15.397 million units , down 20.84% compared to last year.
Tim Cook said Apple had sold 62 million devices iOS during the last three months of 2011 - slightly more than Android devices according to official figures activation of Google. We can estimate the sales of iPod touch to 11.6 million units."
http://www.ihelplounge.com/ihelplounge/2012/01/apple-q1-2012-results-iphone-and-ipad-record.html
GPU wise it's worse than the iPad 2 but better than the iPad 1 or the iPod Touch. Meaning it's as good or better than either for gaming.
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And the report that Fire sales have burned out is telling us that it's not really being that well received. A lot of them were bought as presents over the holidays for others (who probably wanted an iPad), who put them into the closets after a couple of weeks. There's no other explanation for why sales suddenly died. We normally expect sales to fall off after the holidays, but not by over 80%.
It's one report by one analyst group (IDC) AND NPD comes out and calls bloggers reporting that the Fire stopped selling idiots:
"Shipments are not sales, seems like a pretty simple concept to grasp, but it’s apparent from the hysteria that has erupted over IDC’s release of their Q1 tablet shipment data that most of the blogosphere still doesn’t get the difference. We detailed this phenomenon two years ago and still no one can get it right, so I will say it again shipments are not sales - and therefore they present only a partial account of the success or failure of a product or an item.
...
This current firestorm around the Kindle Fire numbers is a perfect example of how mistaking shipments for sales leads the market to incorrect and faulty conclusions about trends and opportunities.
...
So how did the Kindle Fire do in the first quarter of 2012, pretty darn well thank you very much. According to NPD’s Consumer Tracking Service the Kindle actually sold (there is that word again, this time properly used) 1.8m units in the first quarter. That is an actual consumer bought it and took it home (or had it delivered) and paid their own real money."
http://www.npdgroupblog.com/2012/05/shipments-are-not-sales/
Taking these two into account we can expect Fire sales to exceed iPod touch sales in the next few qtrs if Apple does nothing to refresh the iPod Touch line.
Of course they will do a refresh but I think they also need to bump the size of the iPod touch to 5". The Fire may exceed iPod Touch sales anyway. Amazon's business model permits very low hardware margins. Apple's not so much.
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It seems people really don't want a limited product such as the Fire, or for that matter, most other Android tablets (or the Playbook, or the WebOS Touchpad). We'll see how Win 8 and Metro on Arm tablets do when they come out, but I doubt they'll do as well as some think.
Millions of folks disagree regarding the Fire. It's only been out 2 qtrs. How about you not claim it's dead before its second Christmas eh?
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I doubt very much that you've ever compared video on the iPad with video on the Fire, or you wouldn't have said that it's not much smaller on the Fire. I read people saying that, and it's not even close to being true. Video on the Fire is about 6" long, while on the iPad it's about 7.75" long. When viewing both, the iPad video appears much larger, with better detail. Compared to the new iPad, there's no contest in IQ.
I had my fire and my iPad BOTH running netflix when I wrote that to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass unlike some folks. Video on the Fire is indeed about 6" long. The HEIGHT is about 4" tall for a 7.1" diagonal. The 4:3 iPad loses a lot more screen HEIGHT for any widescreen content (16:9, 1.85:1, 2.35:1) than the Kindle. So size wise the kindle is smaller but not hugely smaller. The usable image size is actually pretty close despite the large difference in device size simply because of the aspect ratio. I'd say around 75%-80% for 16:9 content.
Here's how it breaks down for the iPad:
Resolution wise the iPad 2 has a usable screen resolution of 1024x576 for 16:9 content. Same as on the Kindle for 16:9 content. Both have an IPS screen. The Kindle has higher density at 169 ppi vs 132 ppi.
For the iPad 3 the starting price is $499. $300 more than the kindle. Meaning I can buy 3.5 refurb Kindles at $139. So yeah, I sure hope the image quality is better but the image quality for the Kindle is still very good.
So what this tells me is that you've never used the Kindle and iPad for video on a regular basis or it would be very obvious to you how much blank space there is on the iPad for movies and HD shows in comparison to the Kindle. All you've done is looked at the specs and made an incorrect assumption in actual usable screen space.
I watch movies and TV all the time on my iPhone, iPad and Kindle. When on the road I use my 3G iPad. At home, with wifi, I favor the Kindle since it's lighter and I also have access to Amazon Video as well as Netflix.
Edited by nht - 5/8/12 at 9:39am
