Kindle Fire

Kindle Fire is not the champion for Android tablets, but it is the right product for Amazon.

I watched review and comparison videos on YouTube as I have not bought a Kindle Fire yet.  From those videos I had the impression that Kindle Fire is not as fast as Apple's iPad 2.  The page loading and refresh speed is slower than that on iPad 2. The touch response does not seems to be as smooth.  By most measures for a web browsing device and a game console, I doubt it can compete with iPad 2.  Nevertheless, I still think it is a good and smart product.

I have complained about last generation's Kindle reader earlier this year. This new generation of Kindle answered my complaints. The touch screen takes away the clumsiness for users to interact with contents. Compared with the previous generation, Kindle Fire provides all the needed improvements in terms of color display, faster page flipping and rendering. It also provides a comparable video experience as iPad 2. Given its price, it is an adequate tablet but an outstanding content viewer. It is exactly right up Amazon's alley for all the digital contents it wants to sell.

Kindle Fire is a smart product with a right compromise and feature focus. I may buy one for my daughter to read on. But I am sure she will ask for my iPad when it comes to Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja. Young users do not settle for their game experiences.

No more mobile Flash

Adobe gave up on mobile Flash.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/09/us-adobe-apple-idUSTRE7A84NO20111109

Now it is even more obvious that HTML5 is the technology of choice.  HTML5 originated from the grudge of companies that wanted to break free from a dysfunctional consortium, W3C.  It is not every day that an open standard comes out winning.  Nokia/Symbian used to be the major licensee of mobile Flash.  But Symbian is no longer a viable platform. Windows Mobile is going with Silverlight.  Google has been a major champion for HTML5.  It is up to Adobe to work on various hardware compositions with Android licensees.   I don't know whether Adobe had planned for all the factors or whether Adobe has done its best to meet the challenges head on.  The consequence of the announcement is that Adobe has not just given up on mobile Flash, it also sent a disturbing signal to its developer community.

Developers invest in technologies that they can leverage upon.  When Adobe stopped the development of mobile Flash, it means all the technical know-how and the digital assets invested in Flash are not going to be applicable on mobile devices.  Mobile devices are the new frontier.  If developers have no Flash but HTML5 on mobile devices, the future investment of their money, time, and brain power will go to HTML5. The death of mobile Flash is not just the end of Flash on mobile devices.  It will soon drag down the desktop Flash with it.

HP's next tablet is Windows 8

HP's new CEO, Mrs. Whitman, said the next tablet product from HP will use Windows 8.

http://moconews.net/article/419-hps-whitman-were-going-to-make-windows-8-tablets/

Two features caught my attention when I took a look at those Windows 8 introduction videos for the Metro Interface, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihcIlg37QKU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHrcz7zcm_8. One is the touch area outside the visible part of screen and the other is the support of the original windows interface.  A touch area outside the screen requires the same high density touch sensory to be integrated beyond the viewing portion of display. The desktop Windows user interface requires more memory.  Both add to the BOM cost.  

Based on the iPad 2 3G tear down, the BOM cost is around $326.  This number came with the fact of Apple's own A5 processor and the low memory usage enjoyed by iOS.  A WiFi-only iPad 2 would cost even less. Enough hand-held Windows devices had suffered under-provisioned hardware and failed so far.  HP's decision of adapting Windows 8 will put itself between the choice of higher cost per unit or unsatisfactory user experience.  Mrs. Whitman has one shot on this one.  A decision of using Windows 8 may seem to be a no-brainer.  It may turn out to be an ill-thought decision because it seemed to be such a no-brainer.