Of course they do. They also have access to all of the Android apps, and they build their own retail stores like Apple. But honestly now, what are their chances of reinventing themselves as content distributors, of beating Amazon at its own game?

What I suggest is this: There are people who will but a Kindle just to get the content Amazon has. Amazon’s content is a “killer app” for kindles. Whereas, content is not a killer app for Samsung. If a customer buys a Samsung for other reasons, Samsung can make some extra money selling them some content.

So yeah, Samsung may make a little more than the margin on the tablet, but Samsung is not going to sell more tablets because of its content, and I doubt they will make as much per unit as Amazon, not by a long shot. So I don’t see them having the content to drive market share, and I don’t see them selling enough content to subsidize a price war with Kindle.

JM2C.

Aren't Kindle apps available on most major platforms?

I get that Amazon can subsidize the tablet, but I do there is a story for someone who wants a Kindle app, and the Google/Microsoft app store, and the BN app, and the Netflix app. The cost might be higher, but I think a non-trivial portion of the world would be willing to pay it.

And note, there is nothing to stop Samsung from getting subsidies from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Hulu, Netflix, etc... for pre-installing their apps. It's the great crapware returned, except this time antivirus won't be the dominant crapware, but rather contest distributors.

This is a very intelligent reply, thanks. Yes, kindle is available everywhere, and that won’t stop any time soon. And I’m sure Amazon would be happy to subsidize other tablet manufacturers who make their content available.

However, If Amazon don’t become a major tablet player, they are at the mercy of the tablet manufacturers. Terms could change at the drop of a hat. Amazon could wind up bidding for access.

If Amazon become a major player, they can sleep at night. They don’t have to worry about Apple demanding 30% or Samsung going into the content business and cutting Kindle out. They can farm their customers for profiling data that they themselves will use to sell more products.

Kindle everywhere is a no-brainer strategy, but it can’t be the only strategy, otherwise Amazon will find itself squeezed. Far better to have Kindle everywhere while simultaneously taking market share away from the tablet manufacturers that are erstwhile platforms for Kindle.

Samsung is selling a silly amount of smartphones, their sales growth recently is astonishing. Since tablets are fundamentally the same components with a bigger screen, (and again, those components are by and large made by Samsung) I really wouldn't count them out.

> Samsung is selling a silly amount of smartphones, their sales growth recently is astonishing. Since tablets are fundamentally the same components with a bigger screen, (and again, those components are by and large made by Samsung) I really wouldn't count them out.

I'm also betting on them, I mean, they were the ones (together with LG) who almost took Sony out of the flat-screen TV business (Philips has already left that market) so they know what they're doing.

Thing is, is everyone needs a phone. You make a good cost/value phone, get it in stores, and som people browsing for their next phone will buy it

Tablets are a different sort of purchase, and its looking like there will be at least two markets - a low-end, powerful enough to use any HD movies/music/other content you want, and a high-end as laptop replacement. The cost for the low-end device is going to asymptote towards zero, quickly. So that looks like primarily a market for content providers. The high-end device, Apple seems to own the mindshare on, so far

The hardware is disappearing, so its build a software/content platform or die. Who could have predicted in 2006 that the major computing platforms of 2012 would be run by Apple, Google and Amazon?