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Saturday, 19 November 2011

Kindle Fire and Amazon’s credit card strategy

Why every credit card counts.

Resurrected from the archive, the news about Amazon’s Kindle Fire strategy to compete against the iPad and other Android tablets has resurfaced online.
Teardown site unveiled that Amazon loses about $2.70 for every Kindle Fire they sell.
Apparently, the Seattle-based retail giant shells out $201.70 for every Fire tablet that’s built, basically the Kindle Fire you’re holding right now doesn’t benefit Amazon profit-wise, instead, they’re relying on the consumers’ purchase of online content from their website such as ebooks, news and magazine subscriptions, movies, music, et cetera…
The costliest part of the Kindle Fire is said to be the IPS LCD (In-plane Switching, Liquid Crystal Display) and touch panel from LG Display and E Ink Holdings which is said to amount a total of $87 and that the main PCB (Printed Circuit Board) accounts for about $64.45 of the Fire’s price majority of the PCB’s components are supplied by Texas Instruments, as stated by IHS, TI contributes the applications processor, which provides the core functionality of the tablet. The TI OMAP4430 processor costs $14.65, accounting for 7.9 percent of the Kindle Fire’s total BOM. However, TI also supplies other devices, including the power management device and the audio codec. This gives TI a total of $24 per each Kindle, or 12.9 percent of the BOM. The display and the tablet’s semiconductors alone already totals to  $151.45, this doesn’t include the enclosure (costs $14.40) and the battery ($16.50) yet.
Even the box’s contents amount to $3.25 and if we’re to add up the manufacturing costs, enclosure, battery, as well as EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Services) margin, this will bring the price up to a total of $201.70 which is obviously higher than the Kindle Fire’s current $199 price tag.
Obviously, Amazon’s not making any money out of this thing, they’re completely relying on online downloads for recovery of losses and to gain profit of course. In short, every credit card transaction by a Kindle Fire user counts.
Rooting your device and purchasing content from other websites (simply put, patronizing piracy) are one of the things that can KILL Amazon’s ecosystem, so if you’re feeling a bit of guilt now it’s safe to say that Amazon’s actually taking risks to make you read only the stuffs that they want you to read–kind of ironic but that’s how it works. Amazon is essentially the Apple/iTunes of the eReader world, just not as tyrannic.
Now you know why Amazon hates ePubs.

This report was originally posted on PopHerald.com as Kindle Fire and the credit card strategy, under Gadgets and Mobile Category.
Search for more Kindle Fire articles:
Amazon Kindle Fire: Voice recognition, Hulu Plus and more
Nook Tablet effect: Nook Color price cut
Nook Color 2 vs Kindle Fire this month: Reports

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