Yeah, it's not the UI. It's not that great of a UI. It's the $200 price combined with good marketing and the promise that you have access to a lot of content on it, be it books, music or videos.

If someone would compare them rationally, they'd see that a "real" Android tablet that costs around the same would have almost no disadvantage and a lot of advantages compared to Kindle Fire: a lot more apps, higher flexibility for anything, better browsers, app sideloading, and on top of all that, they'd also have all of Amazon's services:books, music and videos. So a $200 Kindle Fire would have almost nothing over a $200 Android tablet.

The only problem is that so far none of the manufacturers did that great all-encompassing marketing for a single tablet that offers you a lot of "benefits" and not a list of specs. Amazon did that, and they saw success. I'd like to see at least Google do that with their upcoming (rumored) Nexus tablet.

Being the first to $200 for a tablet that was seemingly as high-quality (or close enough) to an iPad 2, was a big first mover advantage for Amazon, too. A Google tablet that is $200, or even $150, would help. But it might get the same level of impact only if Google is the first to a "quality" tablet that costs only $99. If Google would do that first and promote the heck out of it and what you can do with it, I think many millions of people would want one.

I doubt they could do it this year, but early next year with the 2nd generation it might be possible. But they better do it before Amazon. Because Amazon will definitely go that direction, since their intention is to only sell a massive amount of such devices, to get users to pay for their content.

The problem with that is, Amazon can sell hardware at a loss, fully expecting to make up the cost from people purchasing wares (books/music/anything on amazon) on their devices. While Google does make money from the Android ecosystem, I doubt it's enough/direct enough, to begin selling hardware at a loss.

Yep. I think if anything, the hacked version of Android is a drawback to the Fire. I know that I find the lack of the Google apps, and the 'real' Android market quite annoying. I suppose 'ordinary user' types of people probably don't notice as much, but I still see it hard for even a giant like Amazon to overcome the momentum behind the 'real' Android.

The problem comes when the Kindle Fire is the most common tablet Android, and the rest of the Android tablets are seen as the "hacked / incompatible" versions. Given the Kindle Fire is now over 50% of the Android tablets sold[1], that might not be a long time. Citi's recent announcement of its Kindle Fire app[2] tends to worry me.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/adriankingsleyhughes/2012/04/27/...

[2] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/citi-launches-first-banking...

This is the most critical observation. The Kindle Fire could have come with QNX and done well with the hooks into Amazon's media empire. That it came with Android is hardly a dire straight for Android -- it builds the same developer base, accustoms users to Android apps, etc.

This is yet another They Gonna Get You Google! article of the sort that we've seen since the days that Android was a pretty sucky wannabe. It is weird that -- with all the success that Android has seen -- people can keep with the same song list as if nothing as changed.