Can Amazon Succeed Outside the US and Will There Be Apps for Amazon's Tablet
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**What is Amazon?**
Amazon is one of the biggest and most famous online stores in the US. It also has local sites like Amazon CA and Amazon UK. Amazon seems like a great place to shop with affordable products and a very wide selection of products from books to electronics. Amazon also offers digital downloads on music and movies. There seems to be one big disadvantage though. Everything seems locked in the US. **My Experience with Amazon**
When I went to Canada, one of the things I wanted to try it. I wanted to see why it was famous. Amazon offered really big discounts on headphones, gadgets and a lot things I wanted to buy. Checking Amazon's local site (Amazon.ca) I was very disappointed that I couldn't even find most of the products available even if what I wanted to buy was from Amazon.com directly. I'm not sure if other local sites have better selection. I have heard (but can't confirm) that some digital downloads are also US-only. It has so much potential but its too bad that you can't make the most out of it.
I did manage to buy a sports armband at a great price. It was a good product. The shipping was much faster than I expected (only 1 day). I only wanted to buy straight from Amazon itself. I was not willing to try the other retailers just yet.
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| [Source](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/otter/dp/KO-aag-spin._V166735073_.jpg) |
**Amazon's Kindle E-reader and Tablet**
Amazon's kindle e-reader seems like a great gadget for book lovers. It's light, portable and affordable. It wasn't locally available in some countries like the Philippines but I could see the potential in it. Just the past week, Amazon announced it's tablet (Kindle Fire). Amazon's approach seems like a great one. It's going to offer the Kindle Fire at $200 (9,700 PHP with tax). It seems as though the reverse on Apple iPricing.
The advantage of Amazon's gadget is that it's already built it's ecosystem. They already offer digital books, apps (through their Amazon App Store), movies and music. Even if the device would only have a few gigabytes of storage, it won't matter. Amazon also has in place an online storage (cloud).
**Kindle Fire and Why it Can be a Great Tablet**
Like I said, the primary advantage of their tablet is their ecosystem. Most of what you would want to do with the tablet is already available. You can get the media you want without the need to get it from your PC and transfer some files. The kindle fire also offers a fast web browser called Silk. It's similar in how Opera Mobile "loads" the website in their servers first before its sent to your device. This allows pages to be loaded much faster. I think their site can explain most of the features so head on [here](http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Color-Multi-touch-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B0051VVOB2/ref=sr_tr_sr_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317745853&sr=1-1) if you're interested. Everything for $200? Why not right?
But there is one quesiton I want to ask. Will it still be limited outside the US?
**Will the content be available outside the US **
They say Netflix has a limited selection here in Canada as well, non-existent in other countries of course. There are problems with copyright though but I'm sure with their name and money they could sign a deal. Apple's iTunes offers a lot of media available to other countries as well. I hope that Amazon plans to expand the media available to other countries. Why wouldn't I want to buy cheap e-books or movies?
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| [Source](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/kindle/otter/dp/KO-aag-apps._V166939197_.jpg) |
**What about Apps?**
It may seem great to have a tablet but with the trend of gadgets today the device will most likely want to have a lot of apps. It wouldn't seem like a problem. They already have the store in place but what about the developers? I've read that some developers who marketed their apps through the Amazon App Store had a [terrible experience](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2011/07/amazon-appstore-game-developer-pulls-app-highlights-problems.ars). It seemed like a good deal. An app would be featured as a "Free app for a day" then the developers would get a cut but things went sour somewhere between those lines. Will those same developers still want to market their apps through the store? We will find out.
Amazon needs to fix their relationships with developers. Their tablet could be limited though still really useful and fun if it didn't have apps. Would someone buy the iPad if it didn't have apps? Maybe but not as much.
**Final Thoughts**
The tablet has everything to succeed. If they can get a fix their relationships with developers. I don't see anything that could hinder their success. I hope they plan to succeed outside the US.
Note: I haven't tried some of the services like cloud storage or music. If there are some things you might find wrong, feel free to tell me about it.