Nieman Journalism Lab | paidContent | GigaOM
Amazon’s new, inexpensive tablet may pose as many challenges as opportunities for publishers and media companies. Mark Mulligan at paidContent compares the relationship between Amazon and the Kindle Fire to Apple and the iPad:
Put simply, Apple is in the business of selling content to help sell devices whereas Amazon is in the business of selling devices to help sell content. There is a poetic symmetry [in] the identical yet polar opposite strategies of the two companies.
Amazon’s role in selling content could give media companies pause, considering that Apple generally leaves content companies to their own interests. Mathew Ingram at GigaOM explains:
Amazon…has already indicated it’s happy to compete with its former publishing partners when it comes to books (its core business) by pressuring them to accept lower prices and also by signing up authors like Tim Ferriss — in effect, becoming a publisher.
Is Amazon suddenly going to get into the magazine business or the newspaper business? No. But its Kindle Singles program is appealing to more and more authors who are using that avenue as an alternative to both publishing traditional books and to magazine articles or newspaper features. Some newspapers and other publications have been using e-books and the Kindle as a tool to extend the life of their content, and that is smart — but Amazon has a clear interest in that business as well.”
“The advent of the Kindle Fire will impact every business engaged in advertising, from your local weekly newspaper to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Groupon, because it will vastly accelerate the transformation to direct-to-consumer marketing by merchants, manufacturers, and service providers, without the traditional interpolation of advertisements to drive buyers to sellers.”
