“Amazon’s willingness to sell hardware at a loss, combined with the strength of its brand, content, cloud infrastructure, and commerce assets, makes it the only credible iPad competitor in the market,” wrote Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.
Epps believes Amazon can sell 3 million to 5 million tablets in the fourth quarter. That compares with Apple selling 9.3 million iPads in the April to June period.
Two other companies are treading the same path as Amazon, but they don’t have quite Amazon’s heft.
One is Barnes & Noble Inc., which launched a “Nook Color” eReader last year that’s nearly indistinguishable from a small tablet. It has a color screen, runs a version of Google Inc.’s Android operating system, and accepts third-party apps. It’s also modestly priced at $250.
Yet Barnes & Noble sees it first and foremost as an eReader device, not as a springboard into competition with a full-blown tablet like the iPad.
Sony Corp.’s first iPad-style tablet, which started shipping two weeks ago, is linked to the company’s online movie and music stores.
It’s set up to capitalize on Sony’s library of PlayStation games as well, but so far, only plays a few of them. However, Sony doesn’t come close to matching the breadth of content in Apple’s iTunes store.
This year, Amazon started streaming movies for no extra charge to customers who’ve signed up for its Prime premium shipping program. On Sept. 26, it added TV shows and movies from News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox studio, bringing the total number of streaming titles to 11,000 titles.
That’s about half of what Netflix’s streaming library has.
Analysts also see Amazon as a possible bidder for Hulu, the TV-streaming website.
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