Bits: Amazon’s Android Tablet Struggles

@nytimesThe New York Times The Amazon Android Tablet Conundrums By NICK BILTON

Bits: Amazon’s Android Tablet Struggles

Waiting for Amazon to sell a full-fledged tablet feels like waiting for the grass to grow: we know it’s going to happen, but its taking an awfully long time.

As we have reported over the past year, Amazon has been readying a color screen tablet that will run the Google Android operating system. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, has even acknowledged that a tablet project is in the works, saying earlier this year that the company was actively working on a “multipurpose tablet device.”

According to a person who works with Amazon and asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly by the company, Amazon has struggled with a number of issues while building its upcoming tablet.

The company’s choice to pick Android in the upcoming tablet, for example, was not an easy one.

Internally, executives at Lab 126, the division of Amazon which makes the Kindle e-reader line, debated the pros and cons of an Amazon tablet running Android versus Amazon building its own operating system based on the existing Kindle platform.

One of the goals with the Kindle tablet is to enable Amazon to deliver its own rich media services, including its cloud music and streaming video products to Kindle customers. Yet the Android platform already offers the same services through Google and other third party companies.

Executives worried that putting Android on an Amazon tablet would be like opening a new music and video store on a city street already packed with dozens of other music and video stores.

In the end, Amazon realized that if it created its own operating system for its upcoming tablet, it would need to entice developers to build apps on yet another platform. Developers are eager to build for Apple, as evidenced by the over 100,000 apps that are available for the iPad, and they build for Android, which has hundreds of thousands of apps available for tablets and mobile phones. Hewlett-Packard, with its webOS, and Research in Motion, also with its own operating system, are having a harder time winning developer’s time and they have far fewer apps.

If the Kindle wants to compete with Apple and its highly popular iPad, Amazon realized that it needs to offer services and products beyond just video, music and books. It also has to give customers access to games, social applications and other third party products.

Amazon also ran into trouble with the touchscreen technology it plans to use in the upcoming tablet. Last year, the company purchased Touchco, a multitouch project that grew out of the Media Research Lab at New York University. Touchco uses a technology called interpolating force-sensitive resistance, which is extremely inexpensive, costing as little as $10 a square foot. But engineers have had trouble integrating the technology into the Kindle e-readers as it can reduce the intensity and crispness of the screen.

Amazon has also been working hard to offer a device that is competitively priced compared to other tablets. The person who works the company said Amazon plans to offer its Kindle tablet at a lower price than the Apple iPad, which costs between $500 and $830 depending on memory size and 3G capabilities.

To do this, Amazon is building its tablet with the bare necessities inside. Limiting memory capacity, peripherals and choosing to skip a built-in camera in the device, this person said.

According to an Amazon executive with close ties to Mr. Bezos, who could not be named because of his senior role in the company, Mr. Bezos made a decision after the iPad launched last year to try to lure customers onto the Kindle platform by offering less expensive devices.

This can be seen with the companies price reduction of the Kindle e-reader over the past year. The third-generation Kindle now starts at $140, compared to the original device which cost $400.

Amazon also hopes to entice customers to its new tablet by offering competitive wireless 3G pricing. Although Apple originally offered unlimited access to AT&T’s wireless 3G on the iPad, the company discontinued this pricing option months after the iPad launch. Apple customers have complained that the current 3G pricing options for the iPad are too expensive.