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First Look at the New Normal from Amazon: Len Edgerly’s Notes from the Santa Monica Kindle Press Conference

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By Len Edgerly
Contributing Editor

Amazon is shortening the half-life of normal.

That’s my impression the morning after the latest torrent of new devices and inventions released yesterday, September 6th, here in Santa Monica, California.

It was just 345 days ago that the Seattle game changers introduced the Kindle Fire at a press conference in New York City. It’s instructive to remember back to when the idea of Amazon selling a color tablet was pretty radical stuff.

Jeff-9-6-2012As Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos strode across the stage and raised that first Fire high, like a proud fist, I thought I saw a golden rim around it. It turned out to be just the reflection of the arty overhead lights at the venue, but Amazon went on to find plenty of gold in the original Fire. In its first nine months the seven-inch tablet snatched 22 percent of the U.S. tablet market.

Before yesterday, “normal” had settled down for a while, to a solid lineup of E Ink Kindles and one Kindle Fire. Amazon Prime customers came to think it normal that their $79 annual membership keeps bringing additional benefits, like free book borrowing at the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and an ever-expanding selection of free movies and TV shows through Prime Instant Video.

Yesterday’s press conference in Santa Monica opened with a new television ad shown on a huge screen at the back of the stage. The ad highlighted Amazon’s most successful innovations, from one-click purchasing to customer reviews and the creation of the Kindle. It ended with this statement: “Look around. What once seemed wildly impractical is now completely normal. Then normal just begs to be messed with.”

As the lights came up, Jeff Bezos entered from Stage Left grinning, ready to start messing with normal. He wore jeans, a sports jacket, and a white shirt with colorful buttons. His famous and jarring laugh is under wraps for these tightly scripted events. What remains is a nearly constant smile, just this side of a smirk.

“We. Love. To invent.” He made that statement just as I’ve written it, with pauses separating the words. He continued, “We love to pioneer. We even love to go down alleys that turn out to be blind alleys.”

Exhibit A of a blind alley, which Bezos cited when I interviewed him in Seattle this summer, was the invention of “locations” in Kindle books. It was a reasonable innovation for identifying where you are in a book when the number of pages changes with the font size, but customers hated it.

“Of course every once in a while,” he said yesterday, “one of those blind alleys opens up into a broad avenue—and that’s really fun.”

By now you have, I’m sure, checked out the new lineup of devices that Bezos introduced. For each one, he had fun touting new features and highlighting the engineering prowess that made them possible. The crowd of 400, mainly journalists not paid to holler and applaud, couldn’t help offering some oohs and ahs.

I felt the suspense build as each of the new products was described on the screen and demonstrated by Bezos at his lectern. What is this thing going to cost?

I guessed too low for the new Kindle 6-inch Paperwhite, with its gorgeous frontlit screen, but my tech assistant for the press conference, Garrett Riley, came close to nailing it when I whispered a request for his prediction.  He guessed $100; it’s actually $119 with Special Offers and ships October 1.

Here is the rest of the lineup:

In the past, I have purchased every new Kindle in order to make sure I have hands-on experience to share with my listeners and readers. But yesterday’s offerings arrived as a blur of possibilities, reminding me of a story I heard when I lived in Casper, Wyoming.

A cowhand was supposed to be counting cattle moving into a corral. When he presented his tally, it contained a single line for each animal along with a few marks that led the foreman to ask, “What are these?”

“Oh, them’s bunches,” the wrangler replied.

Likewise, the specific devices kind of flowed together in my mind as we tried them out and watched demos in the high lobby of the Barker Hanger. Did the Kindle Paperwhite have audio? Or just the Fires? (Answer: Just the Fires.)

Back here at the hotel last night, I hit the one-click button on a Kindle Paperwhite without 3G, because I can tether it to my iPhone whenever I need to. It won’t be shipped for three weeks, so that led me also to buy the new entry-level six-inch Kindle, which I’m happy to see left Amazon’s facility this morning at 6 a.m. and is headed to Cambridge for delivery in four days.

I wanted to try one of the HD Fires, but I love my iPad 3, so I bought the Kindle Fire HD 7” and will have that in just over a week.

In addition to the devices themselves, Amazon’s new generation includes inventions big and small that illustrate just how much fun they’re having and how closely they are aligning themselves with customers.

If you are like me, one of the things you still miss from the days of paper books is being able to flip ahead a few pages to see how far it is to the end of the chapter you’re on. The new Kindles will show that information in the lower corner when you tap to bring up the controls. The software even tracks how fast you’re reading, so the estimate of how soon you will reach the end of the chapter, or the book, is tailored to your own pace.

An invention that has the potential to revolutionize content as much as Kindle Singles is Kindle Serials. It’s an idea that dates back to Charles Dickens, and it will get a big boost from Amazon. There are eight series available already for $1.99 each and two free ones, based on Dickens classics. When you buy a series, you will receive the first installment and all future ones, as described in the listing details.

When a future episode arrives on your Kindle, it will replace the previous file with one containing all the episodes released so far. But unlike file replacements which we now receive sometimes for corrected books, these updated Serials downloads will preserve all of your notes and highlights.

Russ Grandinetti, VP for Kindle content, told me Serials is only available through Amazon Publishing, so you can’t create one yourself through Kindle Direct Publishing yet. But I am sure that is something they’d like to do in the future, once they get the new content up and running.

Another breakthrough is one we’ve known was only a matter of time. Since Amazon owns Audible.com, why not sell an audio book paired with a Kindle book, so you can switch from reading to listening and never lose your place? Welcome to Whispersync for Voice.

Here is my advice: Don’t delay making your choices from among these new device options, and settle in as fast as you can to the new normal for Kindle reading. Because the way things are going, we won’t have long before Amazon messes with normal–again.

 *     *     *

lenKindle Nation Weekender columnist and contributing editor Len Edgerly blogs at The Kindle Chronicles where you can hear his special podcast all about the Santa Monica press conference in Episode 214.

 

 

*     *     *

Extras

First, here’s an important tip for everyone interested in getting one of the new Kindle Fire HD units into their hands as quickly as possible: While most of the new Kindle Fire HD models will be released in November, the brand new $199 16GB Kindle Fire HD 7″ model with Dolby audio, 2 antennas, and dual-band wi-fi will be released NEXT FRIDAY, Sept 14 – here’s a link to get your order in right away http://bit.ly/FIRE-HD-SEPT14 (And by the way, this is the Kindle Fire that will be going to winners of our weekly Kindle Fire giveaway sweepstakes. We’ll be announcing not one but two winners in the next few days.)

In addition to our usual coverage of free and bargain books and this week’s great column from contributing editor Len Edgerly just below, here are links to some of our other coverage of this week’s Kindle news:

New Kindle Ordering Links

Important Links for New Kindle Accessories, Warranties, and More

Kindle Fire Accessories

Kindle E-reader Accessories

Kindle Fire Warranties

Kindle eReader Warranties
The Overflow

14,000+ Titles That Are Now Eligible for Amazon’s Cool New WhisperSync for Voice Program

Judge Approves eBook Pricing Settlement Between Government and Publishers (This one almost upstaged the Amazon press conference, since it became public just moments before Jeff Bezos stepped on stage Thursday. We’ll have more to say about it soon, and it is great news for ebook consumers, but for now you can get the basics from the New York Times.)

 

What About TTS & Collections on the New Kindles?

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By April Hamilton

We know many Kindle Fire owners have been anxiously awaiting the announcements this week to learn if two of their most-wanted Kindle Fire features, Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Collections, would be included in some kind of firmware upgrade for existing KiLarndles. KF-KND Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton attended the press conference this week, and afterward posed these questions directly to Amazon Kindle Vice President Peter Larsen.

TTS Solutions For the Kindle Fire

Larsen stated that Whispersync for Voice and Immersion Reading are Amazon’s TTS solutions for the Kindle Fire family of products. The original TTS functionality is still there in Amazon’s Kindle Keyboard 3G (currently priced at $139) and Kindle DX (currently priced at $379) models, but there is no audio or text-to-speech on the Kindle Paperwhite or the $69 Kindle.


Amazon is offering discounted pricing for Kindle book + Audible audiobook bundles in order to minimize the expense of the Fire TTS solutions. For example, Rob Lowe’s bestselling memoir, Stories I Only Tell My Friends, is available at the usual retail price (set by the publisher) of $9.99. Adding the Audible audiobook after you’ve purchased the Kindle book is currently priced at just $3.95 more, as opposed to usual price of $14.69. So you end up getting both the Kindle book and the Audible audiobook for under $14: less than you’d usually pay for the audiobook alone.

Paying an extra four bucks to hear the book professionally read (in this case, by the author himself) doesn’t seem like such a bad deal, especially since doing so gives you access to the Whispersync for Voice and Immersion Reading services. Whispersync for Voice allows you to switch back between the Audible and Kindle versions of the book, and both formats will “remember” where you left off so you can pick up right there, whether switching from audio to Kindle or vice-versa.

For a limited time, you can test-drive the Kindle Fire TTS solutions for free with these Kindle/Audible book bundles. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR AUDIBLE MEMBERS: when you go to the Audible product page to ‘buy’ the free audiobook, by default, the box to “apply listener credit” will be checked off. Click the box to un-check it; you’ll still get the audiobook for free, and your Audible Listener Credit will remain unused.

Collections

When asked if Amazon intends to add the Collections feature to the Kindle Fire at some point in the future, he replied that while Amazon can’t share its business roadmap or discuss projects in development, the new FreeTime parental controls service is a type of Collection. He went on to say his department knows this is a feature Fire owners have been wanting, and there are some good things in the works.

Amazon Changes the Tablet World Forever with a Brand New Family of Kindle Fires from $159 Up

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New Kindle Fire Family
New Kindle Fire Family

We said it could be Amazon’s biggest press conference ever, but it was even bigger than we’d imagined. Amazon had a press conference today in Santa Monica and absolutely blew away the competition in the tablet and ereader spaces with its new Kindle Fire and Kindle eInk ereader offerings.

The biggest news is an 8.9″ 4G LTE 32 GB Kindle Fire HD with blazingly awesome specs for just $499 with a 250 MB.month data plan for just $50 per year.

Kindle Fire HD - 8.9, Landscape
Kindle Fire HD – 8.9, Landscape

(Apple’s pricing for a not quite comparable but latest-generation iPad model is $729 for the iPad and $230 per year for the same data plan.) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is usually pretty reserved about making direct comparisons with other companies and their products, but during the slightly over an hour he spent onstage today he made such comparisons frequently and concluded, about the 8.9″ 4G LTE 32 GB Kindle Fire: “We’ve just built the best tablet at ANY price.” The 8.9′ 4G LTE 32 GB Kindle Fire HD is available for pre-ordering today and is scheduled to ship November 20 of this year.

We’ll be back with an overview and analysis later, but here’s the guts of Amazon’s press release on the Kindle Fire models today, and we’ll have separate coverage soon on the new Kindle Paperwhite e-Ink models:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sep. 6, 2012– (NASDAQ: AMZN)—Less than one year ago, Amazon introduced Kindle Fire—combining 15 years of innovation into a fully-integrated, end-to-end service for customers. Kindle Fire quickly became the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon.com, earning over 10,000 5-star customer reviews, remaining the #1 best-selling product across the millions of items available on Amazon since its introduction, and capturing 22% of U.S. tablet sales in just nine months. Today, Amazon is excited to announce that it’s taking on the high-end with Kindle Fire HD—the next generation of Kindle Fire.

Kindle Fire HD (Photo: Business Wire) Kindle Fire HD (Photo: Business Wire)

The Kindle Fire HD family—the most-advanced tablets:

  • Ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless, powered by the latest generation 4G chipset, support for all 10 4G bands, and Amazon’s breakthrough 4G LTE data package—customers save hundreds of dollars in the first year compared to other 4G tablets.
  • Stunning custom HD display with in-plane switching, Advanced True Wide polarizing filter and custom laminated touch sensor for 25% less glare with rich color and deep contrast from any viewing angle.
  • Fastest Wi-Fi of any tablet—dual antenna, dual-band, and MIMO—40% faster downloads and streaming compared to the next fastest tablet.
  • High-performance processor and graphics engine for snappy and smooth performance.
  • Dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio—the standard in high-end audio—available for the first time on a tablet.
  • Kindle Fire HD starts with 16 GB of local storage, enough to accommodate the larger file sizes of HD content.
  • Exceptional battery life—7” Kindle Fire HD gets 11 hours of battery life.
  • Front-facing HD camera with custom Skype application for video calling from anywhere in the world.
  • New Amazon-exclusive features like X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Textbooks, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice, Whispersync for Games, and Kindle FreeTime.
  • World’s best content ecosystem—over 22 million movies, TV shows, songs, apps, games, books, audiobooks and magazines.
  • Best cross-platform interoperability, with Amazon apps available on the largest number of devices and platforms so customers can access content anytime, anywhere.
  • Amazon’s top-rated, world-class customer service.

Amazon is also introducing an all-new upgraded version of the best-selling standard definition Kindle Fire with a faster processor, twice the memory and longer battery life—all for an even lower breakthrough price—only $159. Meet the all-new Kindle Fire family at www.amazon.com/kindlefirehd.

“We’re taking on the most popular price point for a tablet, $499, but doubling the storage and incredibly, adding ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com Founder and CEO. “Kindle Fire HD is not only the most-advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price.”

The Best Hardware

Stunning Custom HD Display

The 8.9” display on Kindle Fire HD features an incredible 254 pixels per inch with a resolution of 1920×1200, with pixels that are indistinguishable to the human eye. The 7” Kindle Fire HD features a stunning HD display with 1280×800 resolution that delivers deep, detailed contrast and rich, natural color. Kindle Fire HD also uses Gorilla Glass to provide superior strength and reliability. Kindle Fire HD starts with excellent resolution, but that is only the beginning—Amazon also added custom features that reduce glare and improve color saturation at any viewing angle.

Most tablet displays are made up of two pieces of glass—an LCD on the bottom and a touch sensor on the top, separated by an air gap. This air gap allows light to come through the touch sensor and reflect off the LCD, which causes added glare for the user. Fire HD solves this air gap problem by laminating the touch sensor and the LCD together into a single layer of glass, creating a display that is easy to view even in overhead light, and reducing glare by 25% relative to the latest generation iPad.

Like many tablets, Kindle Fire HD uses in-plane switching (IPS) to improve color reproduction. But displays that only use IPS still appear washed out at various angles, such as laid sideways in bed, flat on a table, or propped up in a case. Fire HD features an Advanced True Wide polarizing filter that is applied directly to the LCD panel. This results in a display that shows the same deep contrast and rich, detailed color from any angle.

High-End Laptop-Quality Wi-Fi—40% Faster Downloads and High-Speed Streaming

HD content has much larger file sizes than standard definition content—for example, Marvel’s The Avengers in standard definition is 785 MB, but in HD, The Avengers is 2.97 GB. Files of this size require the very latest in Wi-Fi technology to download or stream the HD content quickly and reliably—anything else results in buffering, slow downloads and dropped connections. Many Wi-Fi enabled devices only use the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency. This frequency is crowded since it is used by everything from other tablets to microwave ovens, baby monitors, Bluetooth devices, not to mention the neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks. Kindle Fire HD circumvents this congestion with state-of-the-art dual-band Wi-Fi. Kindle Fire HD can automatically switch between the 2.4 GHz network and the newer, less crowded 5 GHz network, resulting in better range and less interference. In addition, dual antennas and Multiple In/Multiple Out (MIMO) allow for higher bandwidth and longer range. The new Kindle Fire HD is the first tablet to market with all three of these latest generation Wi-Fi technologies—dual-band support, dual antennas, and MIMO. This is the first time this state-of-the-art Wi-Fi technology has been offered in a tablet, resulting in 40% faster throughput compared to the latest generation iPad.

Latest Generation 4G LTE Wireless

The large-screen Kindle Fire HD is also available with ultra-fast 4G LTE, with download speeds as fast as Wi-Fi. To keep the 4G Kindle Fire HD just 8.8 mm thin, Amazon custom-designed its 4G wireless modem to be just 2.2 mm. Some 4G devices don’t support all of the non-4G bands—Kindle Fire HD includes support for 10-bands, so even if a customer doesn’t have perfect 4G coverage, the Kindle will fall back to the fastest available 3G speeds.

Amazon’s Breakthrough 4G LTE Data Package

The 4G Kindle Fire HD comes with the most affordable 4G tablet data package. Customers will have access to a 12-month data plan with 250MB per month, 20GB of Amazon Cloud storage, and a $10 credit in the Amazon Appstore for a one-time cost of $49.99. In fact, when you combine the cost of the device and the data plan, customers who purchase the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE will pay over $400 less than latest generation iPad owners in the first year of ownership. Customers can also choose to upgrade to 3 GB or 5 GB data plans from AT&T directly from the device.

8 GB of Storage is Not Enough for an HD Tablet

Customers want to enjoy HD content if they have an HD tablet—and 8 GB of on-device storage isn’t enough for the larger HD file sizes. The 7” Kindle Fire HD is available with 16 GB or 32 GB of on-device storage, and the large screen Kindle Fire is available with 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB of on-device storage. This large on-device storage capacity is in addition to the free storage Amazon provides for Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud. Amazon digital content is automatically backed up for free in the Amazon Cloud’s Worry-Free Archive where it’s available anytime.

Powerful World-Class Processor—Snappy and Smooth

An HD display and HD content must be driven by a powerful processor and optimized software. The Kindle Fire HD family features world-class processors and the new Imagination Technologies graphics engine for lightning-fast HD graphics and excellent fluidity. The 8.9” Kindle Fire HD is powered by the latest generation OMAP4 4470 processor and Imagination SGX544 graphics engine capable of over 12 billion floating point operations per second—50 percent more than Tegra 3, and both Kindle Fire HD 7” and 8.9” come with higher memory bandwidth than Tegra 3. Combining the latest generation processors with significant customization of the Kindle Fire software by Amazon engineers results in a snappy and smooth experience for the user.

Dual Stereo Speakers and Exclusive Dolby Audio—The New Standard for Tablet Audio

Customers shouldn’t need to wear headphones while watching a movie on a tablet to get excellent sound. Kindle Fire HD solves this by combining dual stereo speakers with the next generation Dolby Digital Plus audio platform—the standard in high performance audio—to offer a world-class audio experience. Dolby’s audio suite for Kindle Fire HD includes technology used to adjust volume and deliver easier-to-understand dialogue in movies and TV shows. Kindle Fire HD automatically optimizes the audio profile based on what a customer is doing, such as watching a movie, listening to music, using third party apps like Pandora and Netflix, and also optimizes for headphones versus speakers. All of these pieces combine to create an exceptional audio experience that results in clearer, crisper and balanced sound quality.

11 Hours of Battery Life

The 7” Kindle Fire HD is optimized to deliver high performance without sacrificing battery life, delivering over 11 hours of battery life.

Thin and Light

Even with a custom display, a powerful processor, extra speakers and dual-band/dual-antenna Wi-Fi, the new Kindle Fire HD is extremely light and thin. In fact, Kindle Fire HD 8.9” weighs only 20 ounces and is just 8.8 mm thin. Kindle Fire HD 7” is small enough to take everywhere and light enough to hold easily and comfortably in one hand.

Connect with Bluetooth and HDMI

Kindle Fire HD supports Bluetooth, enabling customers to connect their wireless Bluetooth headphones or Bluetooth speakers to listen to songs, videos or audiobooks. With Bluetooth connectivity, customers can also easily connect to a wide range of Bluetooth-enabled keyboards. HDMI out makes it easy for customers to connect the Kindle Fire HD to their big-screen TV to enjoy their favorite HD videos and photos.

Stay in Touch with Front-Facing HD Camera

The new Kindle Fire HD features a front-facing HD camera. Skype created a customized app tailored for Kindle Fire HD that is ready to use out of the box for free HD video calls at home and abroad. Kindle Fire HD makes it easy for the over 500 million customers already using Skype to get in touch with friends and family.

Beautiful Leather Covers

Covers for Kindle Fire HD feature a premium textured leather exterior in a variety of colors and a subtle woven nylon interior to provide the lightest and thinnest form of protection. The integrated magnetic clasp ensures the cover remains securely closed while in a backpack, purse, or briefcase. The cover automatically wakes Kindle Fire HD upon opening and puts it to sleep when closed, making it easy to dive right back into whatever content a customer is enjoying.

All-New Features Only Amazon Can Offer

X-Ray for Books

One year ago, Amazon introduced X-Ray on Kindle Touch, and customers loved it. Amazon is extending X-Ray to books on Kindle Fire, making it easier than ever for customers to learn more about the content they love by exploring the “bones of the book.” With a single tap, readers can see all the passages across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, historical figures, places or topics that interest them, as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia and Shelfari, Amazon’s community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers.

X-Ray for Movies

“X-Ray for Movies” is a new feature that revolutionizes the movie experience by bringing the power of IMDb directly to movies on Kindle Fire HD, accessible with a simple tap. Without ever leaving the movie, customers can look up any actor in the scene or movie, see what other movies they have been in, and view photos, biographies and more. X-Ray is offered only by Amazon and is exclusive to the Amazon ecosystem. IMDb, an Amazon company for 14 years, is the #1 movie website in the world with more than 160 million monthly unique visitors worldwide.

X-Ray for Textbooks

Glossaries in print textbooks contain the most important information for students, but they’re placed inconveniently in the back of the book. And glossaries don’t always contain enough information for students working to understand new concepts. X-Ray for Textbooks solves these problems by integrating the glossary directly into each textbook page and by algorithmically assembling related data from Wikipedia and YouTube.

Immersion Reading

Research supports that readers can benefit from listening while reading. Together, Amazon and Audible invented “Immersion Reading,” allowing customers to fuse together printed text and professionally-narrated audiobooks, giving readers the ability to experience their reading with two senses—sight and sound. As the reader views the text of their book on Kindle Fire, text is highlighted as it is professionally-narrated, creating a more immersive experience, as well as deeper learning and comprehension.

Whispersync for Voice

Whispersync for Voice allows customers to synchronize their Kindle books with professionally-narrated audiobooks—customers can start reading a book on Kindle Fire and seamlessly switch to listening to the companion audiobook, picking up exactly where they left off. With Whispersync for Voice, customers can continue enjoying books during commutes or any other time their eyes are busy. When they get in the car, customers can effortlessly pick up the story right where they left off reading by listening to the professionally-narrated audiobook using Bluetooth on Kindle Fire HD or with any Audible app on their smartphone.

Ideal for Gaming

Amazon has worked with leading developers to offer new Android games exclusively on Kindle Fire HD, including Activision’s popular Skylanders Cloud Patrol franchise and Crytek’s Fibble. In Skylanders Cloud Patrol, gamers will discover a new feature—the ability to purchase physical toys from within a game. Customers will be able to purchase a unique Skylanders character with a single click, and Amazon.com will deliver it to their doorstep. In addition to hardware that’s perfect for gaming like stunning custom HD displays, fast Wi-Fi and large on-device storage, the Kindle Fire HD family also offers HD Games, gyroscope and accelerometer for full tilt and turn controls, as well as social gaming features including group leaderboards and achievements.

Whispersync for Games

One of the biggest frustrations of mobile gaming is that when customers switch devices or delete and re-install the game on the same device, they have to start a level over or go back to the beginning of the game. To solve this problem, Amazon extended its Whispersync technology to gaming with Whispersync for Games. Whispersync for Games syncs a customer’s place in the game and saves unlocked levels, so even if they get a new device, the progress is backed up in the cloud.

Kindle FreeTime

Amazon today reinvented parental controls with Kindle FreeTime. FreeTime gives parents easy-to-use tools to personalize their children’s digital media experience. With FreeTime, parents never have to worry what content their kids will access—parents select all of the content their kids can see and kids can’t exit FreeTime without a password. FreeTime also lets parents limit their kids’ screen time by content type—they may choose to limit videos and games, for example, but make reading time unlimited. Kindle FreeTime will be available for free on all of the new Kindle Fire devices starting in the coming weeks.

Cloud-Accelerated Silk Browser

The new Kindle Fire family uses a new version of Amazon Silk with the unique “split browser” architecture that leverages the computing speed and power of Amazon Web Services to deliver content faster. The new Amazon Silk browser features an updated core rendering engine and a reengineered transport layer that contribute to faster page loads. Customers can experience full-screen browsing, reading view, and improved browsing with most-visited, trending and recommended sites all available from a single screen.

All-New Email and Calendar

The new Kindle Fire family features world-class Microsoft Exchange integration, with fine-tuned performance on many of the most critical e-mail functions. For example, typical Exchange accounts sync with the oldest emails first, ending with the most recent emails—Kindle Fire instead syncs with newer emails first, then with older emails, getting customers faster access to the most recent emails they are looking for. Kindle Fire also features a new calendar app, making it easy for customers to stay connected and keep track of their schedules. The new e-mail client offers support for the world’s most popular email providers—including Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Hotmail and more.

Photos Brought to Life

Photos come alive in stunning high-resolution on Kindle Fire HD. Fire’s mosaic view arranges personal photos beautifully, and customers will be delighted to see their best shots on their TV with HDMI out. Kindle Fire lets customers easily import their photos from Facebook and because their photos are securely stored in Amazon Cloud Drive, they never have to worry about losing their favorite pictures.

New Latest Generation Kindle Fire—Only $159

Kindle Fire, the #1 best-selling product on Amazon for the past year, is now even better, with all the features customers love about the original Kindle Fire—all the content, seamless integration with the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, and a brilliant 7” touchscreen—now with a faster processor for 40% faster performance, twice the memory and longer battery life. The new Kindle Fire also offers all of the new features that are exclusive to the Kindle Fire family—including X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Books, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice, Kindle FreeTime and more.

Backed by the World’s Best Content Ecosystem, Cross-Platform Interoperability and Customer Service

All the Content—Over 22 Million Movies, TV Shows, Songs, Apps, Games, Books, Audiobooks and Magazines

Kindle Fire offers customers the largest selection of digital content, including thousands of exclusives:

  • Over 120,000 movies and TV episodes, including the most popular titles and the biggest new releases. Customers can stream or download, purchase or rent. Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, commercial-free streaming of over 25,000 popular movies and TV episodes at no additional cost with Prime Instant Video. Customers who are new to Prime get one free month of Amazon Prime when they purchase Kindle Fire.
  • Instant access to the most popular apps and games, including Where’s My Perry?, Pinterest, NBA JAM, HBO GO, Hulu Plus and Asphalt 7—each one optimized for Kindle Fire HD.
  • Millions of songs from over 3 million artists. Customers can stream purchases from the cloud, download playlists for offline listening, and store their personal collection in the cloud for access anytime, anywhere.
  • Millions of books, including over 180,000 titles that are exclusive to the Kindle Store. Over 650,000 books are priced at $4.99 or less; over 1.2 million are $9.99 or less. Amazon Prime members can choose from over 180,000 titles, including all 7 Harry Potter books and over 100 current and former New York Times best sellers, to borrow for free as part of Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, as frequently as a book a month with no waiting and no due dates.
  • Hundreds of magazines and newspapers—including Vogue, Esquire, National Geographic and Better Homes and Gardens—with glossy full-color layouts, HD photography, and beautifully detailed illustrations. Customers can try more than 50 free single issues available in the Kindle Newsstand, including Cosmopolitan, Maxim, O, The Oprah Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Elle and Martha Stewart Living.
  • Over 100,000 professionally-narrated audiobook titles available, with free samples to listen to before buying.

Best Cross-Platform Interoperability with “Buy Once, Enjoy Everywhere”

With apps available on the largest number of devices and platforms, Kindle makes it easier than ever to access content anytime, anywhere. Customers can read and sync their Kindle books across iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac, Android phones and tablets, BlackBerry, Windows Phones and in their web browsers with Kindle Cloud Reader. Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video are available to watch on iPad, PC, Mac, Xbox, Playstation 3, Blue-Ray, Roku and hundreds of compatible TVs, and because of Amazon’s Whispersync technology, customers never have to worry about losing their place in a movie or TV show. Amazon MP3s are available on iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Sonos and web browsers with Cloud Player. Apps from the Amazon Appstore for Android are available on all Android phones and tablets. No other company offers customers this level of flexibility with their content.

Free Month of Amazon Prime

Amazon continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to bring Prime members new movies, TV shows and books to enjoy at no additional cost. Amazon customers enjoy unlimited, commercial-free, instant streaming of over 25,000 movies and TV episodes with Prime Instant Video; over 180,000 books from Kindle Owners’ Lending Library to borrow for free, as frequently as a book a month, with no waiting and no due dates; and receive the convenience of Free Two-Day Shipping on over 15 million items from Amazon.com. Even with all this investment and continually growing selection, Prime remains at the same low price it launched with seven years ago—just $79. Customers who are new to Prime get one free month of Amazon Prime when they purchase Kindle Fire.

Arrives Pre-Registered

Kindle Fire comes automatically pre-registered so customers can immediately start enjoying their digital content purchased from Amazon or shop for new content.

Top-Rated, World-Class Customer Service

When a customer shops on Amazon.com, buys a Kindle Fire, or buys Kindle content, they know that with that they are also getting Amazon’s world-class customer service. Amazon scored 86—the top score—on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), and 89 on the ForeSee customer satisfaction survey—the highest ever attained by a retailer. Amazon has been rated #1 in the National Retail Federation Customers’ Choice Awards, has been awarded the top spot in the MSN Money Customer Service Hall of Fame three years in a row, and is a JD Power and Associates 2012 Customer Service Champion. Customers have been shopping on Amazon for over 15 years, and they continue to do so because of the unparalleled end-to-end customer experience.

Special Offers

The new Kindle Fire family comes with special offers that appear on the lock screen. Examples of special money-saving offers that customers will enjoy include a $5 credit in the Amazon MP3 Store and a $5 credit for select titles in the Amazon Instant Video Store. Customers will also receive special offers and screensavers from brands like AT&T, Discover and Intel, such as a special offer of a $10 Amazon.com Gift Card when a customer uses their Discover card to purchase a digital product on Amazon.

Best Tablets at Any Price

The all-new Kindle Fire HD 7”—with a stunning HD display, the fastest Wi-Fi, exclusive HD audio with two stereo speakers and Dolby Digital Plus, 16 or 32 GB of storage and a powerful world-class processor—all backed by the world’s best content ecosystem, best cross-platform interoperability and best customer service is $199. Kindle Fire HD 7” is available for preorder starting today at www.amazon.com/kindlefirehd7 and will begin shipping on September 14.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9”, with all of these features plus an ultra-high definition 8.9” screen, and 16 or 32 GB of storage, starts at $299 and is available for preorder starting today at www.amazon.com/kindlefirehd, and will begin shipping on November 20.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9” 4G, with the most affordable 4G data plan in the world, and 32 or 64 GB of storage, starts at $499 and is available for preorder starting today, and will begin shipping on November 20.

The new latest generation Kindle Fire with a faster processor for 40% faster performance, twice the memory and all the new features is only $159, and pre-order to reserve their page in line at www.amazon.com/kindlefire and will begin shipping on September 14.

CUT TO THE CHASE?

Here are our quick-ordering links!

 

What to Expect on September 6: It Might Be Amazon’s Biggest Press Conference Ever, with Major Pyrotechnics for the Kindle Fire and Amazon Prime

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Amazon’s press office staffers have been earning their keep this month — the company has put out 16 press releases already in August, including 10 in the last 11 days, after averaging 11 per month during the first half of 2012 — but the real heavy lifting lies in the work that’s being done to prepare for what may become Amazon’s biggest press conference ever next Thursday, September 6.

Based on what we’ve seen from Amazon in the last few weeks, combined with developments like the release of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet in July, we’re fully prepared for a blockbuster event that, among other things, should feature

  • the release of a brand new Kindle tablet (to succeed the suddenly sold out Kindle Fire 1),
  • updated eInk models including one or more with a front-lit display to remove any slight hardware advantage held by Nook’s Glowlight feature, and
  • major enhancements to Amazon Prime that could have the effect of transforming customer experience across the entire Amazon Store.

As a Kindle Nation Daily reader you will be well represented at next week’s press conference in Santa Monica, with KF-KND editor April Hamilton and contributing editor Len Edgerly (of The Kindle Chronicles) on the scene (April for same-day coverage and Len for an onsite interview that will be featured in the following Saturday’s Kindle Nation Weekender), and associate editor Candace Cheatham and myself stirring the pot from KND world headquarters.

Jeff Bezos

Part of the challenge for Amazon in such an event is to find a way to distill dozens or even hundreds of product enhancements, feature roll-outs, and new or significantly expanded services into a single compelling story that Jeff Bezos can present to the world from a single stage within, one hopes, a single hour. Our expectation that this could be “Amazon’s biggest press conference ever” is based in large part on the impressive breadth of groundbreaking new announcements that the company seems poised to make, but figuring out how Amazon could break all that ground without stories A and B stepping on stories C, D, and E is way above my pay grade, and perhaps even Bezos’.

And we could be totally wrong, but we can’t think of any way that Amazon could layer an announcement like a new Kindle phone or, say, the acquisition of Spotify AB on top of the aforementioned items without totally losing focus on its various Fire, eInk, and Prime announcements. The image that comes to mind for me is of Henry Ford holding a press event to announce the Model A but also, at the same event, announcing the Model T, the Thunderbird, the Lincoln, the Falcon, the F-150 and more. Wouldn’t the glut of messages have made them all the Edsel? But it may be that we on the outside just lack sufficient imagination.

So let’s start with Amazon Prime.

“Amazon Prime is the best bargain in the history of shopping,” said Jeff Bezos again this week in one of Amazon’s press releases, and this time he teased us — and perhaps next week’s press conference as well — by adding the line “and it’s going to keep getting better.”

Better how?

Over the past five years many of us have come to understand Amazon’s Kindle and now the Kindle Fire as a seamless, friction-free, almost instantaneous content delivery system for a growing catalog of entertainment and/or educational content that began with ebooks and now includes newspapers and magazines, blogs, audiobooks, music, movies, television programming, games and productivity apps, and other web content. Of course all of that content, in order to be deliverable almost instantaneously to handheld devices with no transmission or data cost, is digital in one way or another.

But Amazon is far from just a digital store: it has grown the rest of its retail store relentlessly across a growing number of departments, platforms and nations, with the result that it now offers tens of millions of physical products in nearly every imaginable category. And until Jeff Bezos and his team of innovators manage to turn Amazon into Nanozon by coming up with some way of digitalizing and then reifying physical products via some new wireless manufacturing-via-quantum physics functionality, Amazon Prime may offer the company and us its customers the best chance to revolutionize delivery, even if it doesn’t quite hit the “nearly instantaneous” sweet spot.

One possibility would be a major expansion of expedited Prime shipping options such as Amazon’s remarkable $3.99 overnight delivery service and the same-day delivery program that is now available for some products in the cities of Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

Part of the trick for Amazon is to build as much value as possible into its Amazon Prime buffet while avoiding any increase in the same $79 per year membership price with which it kicked off Prime back in 2005 when its only real offering was free two-day shipping on about a million  selected items. It’s a major feather in Amazon’s cap that the program is still just $79 seven years later with 15 million eligible items and the much newer additions of 22,000 free movie and television offerings under Prime Instant Video and 180,000 Kindle titles that can be borrowed free (up to one per month with no due dates) via the Prime-eligible Kindle Owners Lending Library.

Another possible addition to Prime features might involve the offering of 3G or 4G Kindle Fire connectivity for Prime members. Such an offering would be costly, but we always pay attention to what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has to say, and we thought it was very significant when he told our contributing editor Len Edgerly in an exclusive interview earlier this summer that, of all of the company’s customers, the people who read the most (or buy the most books) are people who buy “our 3G version of the Kindle.”

“And the reason, I think, for that,” Bezos said, “is that it makes getting books even more frictionless, makes it even easier. You don’t have to look for a WiFi hotspot. You can just get them wherever you happen to be. And it roams globally at no charge, so people can figure that out, too, and get it wherever they are, even if they’re traveling around the world.”

Part of the DNA that has made Bezos and Amazon so successful, of course, lies in the capacity to take a conclusion like that one and extrapolate that adding 3G or 4G wireless connectivity for a new deluxe Prime-compatible Kindle Fire would almost definitely have a similarly salubrious effect on the shopping behavior of its owners for other content and products, both digital and physical, in the Amazon store. It remains to be seen whether Amazon could make free 3G or 4G wireless connectivity work for its tablets the way it has worked for the Kindle 3G and Kindle DX, but even limited connectivity to the Amazon cloud and the Amazon store would be a significant start. If Amazon could offer unlimited connectivity across the entire web, market share for the Fire tablet family would quickly grow well beyond the benchmark the company announced this week: “Kindle Fire has captured 22% of tablet sales in the U.S.”

Then there’s the very significant fact that the press conference is being held in Santa Monica, rather than in New York like past Kindle press conferences and announcement events. We don’t think the LaLa-land location is any accident, so we’re expecting that the event will include some real Hollywood star power, perhaps in support of original video content that might be free to Amazon Prime customers for viewing on the Kindle Fire and other devices — say, an original docudrama series based loosely on the agency model pricing conspiracy, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Meryl Streep, and John Lithgow?

Nor would we be surprised to see some stars onstage as voice actors in association with even greater Kindle integration and expansion of Amazon’s Audible.com subsidiary, following on the recent Audible roll-out of its “A-List” program of performances featuring Colin Firth, Anne Hathaway, Kate Winslet, Samuel L. Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Connelly.

No doubt it will all be great fun, and it may lead Amazon’s share price to rise even further beyond its current all-time high levels, but don’t get us wrong: after the confetti has landed and helium balloons have attached themselves to the ceiling, the event should be largely about the Kindle and especially a new Kindle Fire. Although Amazon announced this week that it is “sold out” of the Kindle Fire, this “sold out” status is not quite the same as the “sold out” status that occurred in November 2008 (and lasted for months) after Oprah went Gaga over the original Kindle. This time it is clearly the case of Amazon pulling the Kindle Fire’s Buy button ahead of the announcements contemplated by Bezos when he said in a release this week: “Kindle Fire is sold out, but we have an exciting roadmap ahead—we will continue to offer our customers the best hardware, the best prices, the best customer service, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best content ecosystem.”

So what about that exciting roadmap? We’ll certainly be paying close attention to see how much adoption Amazon announces of the ideas noted in our July 23 piece entitled 17 Features Amazon Must Add to the Next Kindle Fire, After Google Raises the Bar with the Nexus 7 Tablet. But even that list now seems so July 23 that we’ll expand on it a bit here and suggest the following killer feature set for a brand new Fire:

  • Slim it down
  • Lighten it up
  • Improve screen resolution
  • Speed up the processor
  • Improve web functionality with less reliance on truncated “mobile” representations
  • Allow an SD Card
  • Offer 3G/4G wireless connectivity, possibly free with Amazon Prime
  • Keep the $199 price point for the new 7” Fire and offer a larger Fire for under $250
  • Allow greater user control of font sizes on the web and in apps
  • Allow full input/output functionality for apps such as Google Docs/Google Drive documents
  • Enhance curb appeal so that teh Fire looks and feels as good as the Nexus 7
  • Add external volume controls
  • Provide camera functionality similar to that on the iPhone
  • Provide Siri/Iris Capability that hits the sweet spot both for information and for commerce
  • Add a microphone
  • Add Text-to-Speech
  • Place the power switch (and an external volume control) on the upper right edge
  • Allow greater user personalization and customization
  • Add full-featured GPS for a 3G or 4G model
  • Add maximum Android platform compatibility
  • Add access to Google’s Android Market
  • Seize every available opportunity to make the Fire a replacement for netbooks and notebook computers

See what we mean? Even half of that is a lot to announce in one day. And there are plenty of other possibilities, including even the possibility of a dual screen tablet/eInk combo, but we’d rather see Amazon focus on making each of these very different devices, as well as the Kindle phone that will surely follow, as good as it can be.

Stay tuned.

Publetariat Dispatch: What Makes a Critic Tick? Connected Authors and the Determinants of Book Reviews

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Publetariat: For People Who Publish!
In today’s Publetariat Dispatch, we share findings from a Harvard Business School study about book reviews.
A study of literary critics was recently conducted and the results have been posted at Harvard Business School’s The Working Knowledge journal.

Executive Summary:

The professional critic has long been  heralded as the gold standard for evaluating products and services such  as books, movies, and restaurants. Analyzing hundreds of book reviews  from 40 different newspapers and magazines, Professor Michael Luca and  coauthors Loretti Dobrescu and Alberto Motta investigate the  determinants of professional reviews and then compare these to consumer  reviews from Amazon.com.

Key concepts include:

  • The data suggest that  media outlets do not simply seek to isolate high-quality books, but also  to find books that are a good fit for their readers. This is a  potential advantage for professional critics, one that cannot be easily  replicated by consumer reviews.
  • Expert ratings are correlated with Amazon ratings, suggesting that  experts and consumers tend to agree in aggregate about the quality of a  book. However, there are systematic differences between these sets of  reviews.
  • Relative to consumer reviews, professional critics are less  favorable to first-time authors. This suggests that one potential  advantage of consumer reviews is that they are quicker to identify new  and unknown books.
  • Relative to consumer reviews, professional critics are more  favorable to authors who have garnered other attention in the press (as  measured by number of media mentions outside of the review) and who have  won book prizes.

Author Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of expert reviews in the  book industry. Reviews are determined not only by the quality of the  product, but also by the incentives of the media outlet providing the  review. For example, a media outlet may have the incentive to provide  favorable coverage to certain authors or to slant reviews toward the  horizontal preferences of certain readers.

Empirically, we find that an  author’s connection to the media outlet is related to the outcome of the  review decision. When a book’s author also writes for a media outlet,  that outlet is 25% more likely to review the book relative to other  media outlets, and the resulting ratings are roughly 5% higher. Prima  facie, it is unclear whether media outlets are favoring their own  authors because these are the authors that their readers prefer or  simply because they are trying to collude.

We provide a test to  distinguish between these two potential mechanisms, and present evidence  that this is because of tastes rather than collusion — the effect of  connections is present both for authors who began writing for a media  outlet before and after the book release. We then investigate other  determinants of expert reviews. Relative to consumer reviews, we find  that professional critics are less favorable to first time authors and  more favorable to authors who have garnered other attention in the press  (as measured by number of media mentions outside of the review) and who  have won book prizes.

 

Read the full text of the paper (in pdf format) here.

 

Disruption Ahead for iTunes, Google Play? Updated Amazon Cloud Player Includes New Scan and Match Technology, Free Audio Quality Upgrades, and More

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Over the past five years much of the battle to sell digital content (ebooks, music, video and apps) has been about devices (Kindle, iPod, iPad, etc.), and what has not been about devices has been about platforms.
clouds
But the next phase will be every bit as much about whose cloud we’re on, so it is no surprise that Amazon is taking giant steps to make it as inviting as possible for us to use its cloud (rather than Apple’s, Google’s, or somebody else’s) to enjoy the content we have purchased in the past, anywhere and on any device, no matter what device we may have been using when we acquired the content.

Among the exciting new features:

Amazon scans customers’ iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and matches the songs on their computers to Amazon’s 20 million song catalog. All matched songs – even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs – are instantly made available in Cloud Player and are upgraded for free to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. Music that customers have already uploaded to Cloud Player also will be upgraded.

Here’s the guts of the press release from Amazon today – please read carefully, because this is very likely to make for big — and positive — changes in the way you use your Kindle Fire and/or other devices to enjoy music, video, apps, and ebooks:

 

Amazon announces licenses from Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 150 independent distributors, aggregators and music publishers

 

 

Coming soon, Roku and Sonos — following the recent addition of iPhone and iPod Touch, Roku and Sonos will join the list of Cloud Player compatible devices

 

 

 

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 31, 2012– (NASDAQ: AMZN) – Amazon.com, Inc. today announced Cloud Player licensing agreements that bring significant updates to Amazon Cloud Player. The agreements are with Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and more than 150 independent distributors, aggregators and music publishers. Amazon’s scan and match technology gives customers a fast and easy way to get all of their music from their computers to the cloud. Cloud Player customers can then enjoy their music on their favorite devices, including Kindle Fire, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android devices and any web browser, and soon, Roku streaming players and Sonos home entertainment systems.

 

 

New Cloud Player features include:

 

  • Amazon MP3 purchases — including music that customers purchased in the past — are automatically saved to Cloud Player, which means that customers have a secure backup copy of the music they buy from Amazon, free of charge.
  • Amazon scans customers’ iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and matches the songs on their computers to Amazon’s 20 million song catalog. All matched songs – even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs – are instantly made available in Cloud Player and are upgraded for free to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. Music that customers have already uploaded to Cloud Player also will be upgraded.
  • Any customer with a Kindle Fire, Android device, iPhone, iPod touch, or any web browser — and soon, a Roku streaming player or Sonos home entertainment system — can play their music anywhere.

 

“We are constantly striving to deliver the best possible customer experience for Cloud Player, and today we are offering our customers a significant set of new features, including scan and match technology and audio quality upgrade,” said Steve Boom, Vice President of Digital Music at Amazon.

 

“We are happy to have such broad industry support in enabling these features for customers.”

 

 

“Music fans are passionate consumers, so making it as easy as possible for them to buy music and enjoy it anywhere, anytime and on any device, is important to us,” stated Rob Wells, President of Global Digital Business at Universal Music Group. “And Amazon’s new service does just that by enabling fans to find, discover and experience more music than ever before. UMG is committed to working with innovative services like Amazon to provide consumers more choice and to expand the marketplace even further for digital music.”

 

 

“Amazon is an important destination for music fans, and we’re pleased to see them creating innovative music services that offer fans the ability to enjoy their music conveniently on all their devices,” said Mark Piibe, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development for EMI Music. “Cloud Player makes it easy for users to have their entire music collection at their fingertips wherever they are, so that they’ll get even more value from the music they buy, and will form an even deeper connection with the artists they love.”

 

 

“Cloud technology is producing a powerful new generation of entertainment experiences, making the discovery of new content easier and offering instant access to music across multiple devices. Amazon’s locker service has an impressive set of capabilities, which expand the value of owning music. It will give fans greater flexibility with their libraries and entice new customers to explore the benefits of a digital collection,” said Stephen Bryan, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Recorded Music, Warner Music Group.

 

 

“We are excited to be working with Amazon to offer consumers the ability to enjoy their music anywhere—on any device—with Cloud Player,” said Dennis Kooker, President, Global Digital Business and U.S. Sales, Sony Music Entertainment. “Amazon continues to innovate on behalf of music fans, and we believe our new licensing agreement makes it easier and more convenient than ever for Amazon customers to access, discover and ultimately buy more music.”

 

 

Cloud Player is available in a Free tier and a Premium tier. Cloud Player Free customers can store all MP3 music purchased at Amazon, plus import up to 250 songs from their PC or Mac to Cloud Player, all at no charge. Cloud Player Premium customers can import and store up to 250,000 songs in Cloud Player for an annual fee of $24.99. Amazon-purchased MP3s (including all previous purchases) do not count against the 250 or 250,000-song limits and will be added to both Free and Premium Cloud Player libraries at no charge. Amazon Cloud Player is automatically integrated into Kindle Fire and the new Cloud Player features will be automatically delivered to Kindle Fire users over the next few days.

 

Customers can also visit www.amazon.com/cloudplayer or download the app on iOS or Android.

 

Starting today, Cloud Drive will be used for file storage and Cloud Player will be used for music storage and playback — each service will offer separate subscriptions. Customers can still use Cloud Drive to store any of their files in the cloud and access them from any web browser or by using the Cloud Drive Desktop Apps. Customers can store up to 5GB free and storage plan prices have been lowered to start at $10 per year for 20 GB. To learn how to get started on Cloud Drive visit www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore.

Amazon Releases Quarterly Financials and Stays the Course: Sacrificing Short-Term Profits in Its Successful Pursuit of Increased Market Share and Astonishing Sales Growth

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Amazon.com (AMZN) announced second-quarter financial results today, with net sales increasing 29% to $12.83 billion, compared with $9.91 billion in second quarter 2011. Nothing surprising there, as the company has been on an astonishing tear of sustained sales growth for several years.

The big surprise for many was that, in a strong sign that investors are finally beginning to understand what the company is all about, the stock market did not react negatively to the company’s news that its net operating profit fell 96% to $7 million, from $201 million in the year-ago quarter. Amazon also said it expects to lose money in the third quarter or 2012.

It was not long ago that such a financial report would have sent Amazon’s share price plummeting, even if only for a few hours. As of 7 pm EST today, Amazon shares had risen over $2 to $222.40 in after-hours trading, after closing the regular session up $2.96 to $220.01.

For the last couple of years especially, Amazon has been shaving product prices wherever possible in order to build its customer base and market share, while plowing large investments into product fulfillment centers, physical and virtual distribution channels, and manufacturing infrastructure for its various Kindle and Kindle Fire units.

We’ve been saying here at KND for well over a year that Amazon is positioning itself to capture something very close to an unprecedented 50% retail market share across all formats in the U.S. book trades by the end of 2013. In addition to whatever it is accomplishing across its remarkable and relentlessly expanding array of other product lines, we suspect that that kind of market share will have far more lasting benefits for Amazon and its investors than a few million here and there in 2012 quarterly profits.

Attaining that kind of market share will also mean continued and increasing scrutiny of Amazon by the same folks at the Justice Department who currently have their sights trained on Apple and the agency model publishers. Ironically, it’s the combination of that scrutiny and Amazon’s own corporate commitment to innovation, efficiency and its big-tent, customer-experience business model that provides some basis for optimism that its growing market dominance will actually continue to have positive effects for readers, authors, and consumers.

Here are the guts of Amazon’s press release this afternoon:

Amazon.com Announces Second Quarter Sales up 29% to $12.83 Billion

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 26, 2012– Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2012.

Operating cash flow was $3.22 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $3.21 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2011. Free cash flow decreased 40% to $1.10 billion for the trailing twelve months, compared with $1.83 billion for the trailing twelve months ended June 30, 2011.

Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 468 million on June 30, 2012, consistent with 468 million one year ago.

Net sales increased 29% to $12.83 billion in the second quarter, compared with $9.91 billion in second quarter 2011. Excluding the $272 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 32% compared with second quarter 2011.

Operating income was $107 million in the second quarter, compared with $201 million in second quarter 2011. The unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $8 million.

Net income decreased 96% to $7 million in the second quarter, or $0.01 per diluted share, compared with net income of $191 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, in second quarter 2011. The second quarter 2012 includes $65 million of estimated net loss related to the acquisition and integration of Kiva Systems, Inc.

“Amazon Prime is now the best bargain in the history of shopping – that is not hyperbole,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “We successfully launched Prime seven years ago with free unlimited two-day shipping on one million items. The price of annual membership was $79. Since then, Prime selection has grown to 15 million items. We’ve also added 18,000 movies and TV episodes available for unlimited streaming. And we’ve added the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library – borrow 170,000 books for free with no due dates – it even includes all seven Harry Potter books. What hasn’t changed since we launched Prime? The price. It’s still $79. We’re very grateful to our Prime members, and thank them whole-heartedly for the business and for the word-of-mouth that has made this program grow.”

Highlights

  • Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items available on Amazon.com since launch. Over this same period, the top 10 selling items on Amazon.com were digital products – Kindle, Kindle books, and accessories.
  • Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has grown to over 170,000 books available to borrow for free as frequently as a book a month, including many titles exclusive to Amazon. Additionally, customers can now borrow all seven Harry Potter books in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.
  • During the quarter, 20 of our top 100 bestselling Kindle titles were from Kindle Direct Publishing authors.
  • Amazon expanded its catalog of title offerings for Prime Instant Video to more than 18,000 movies and TV episodes, announcing licensing agreements with Paramount Pictures and MGM, for titles including Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Mean Girls, Nacho Libre, Clueless, Moonstruck, Rain Man, Silence of the Lambs, Species, Stargate and many more.
  • Amazon.com announced that Prime Instant Video is now available on the Xbox 360 console. Customers can now access Amazon video content through Kindle Fire, PlayStation 3, Mac or PC, or on a TV using either a compatible connected device such as a Blu-ray player or a Roku or directly on compatible Smart TVs.
  • Amazon’s LOVEFiLM, the leading European film and TV subscription service, announced new multi-year agreements with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution and NBCUniversal International Television Distribution, providing LOVEFiLM members in the U.K. exclusive streaming access to movies and TV series from the studios, including Despicable Me, Green Zone, and Robin Hood. The agreements are the latest in a long line of exclusive content deals announced by LOVEFiLM, including agreements with Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Entertainment One and STUDIOCANAL.
  • North America segment sales, representing the Company’s U.S. and Canadian sites, were $7.33 billion, up 36% from second quarter 2011.
  • International segment sales, representing the Company’s U.K., German, Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and Spanish sites, were $5.51 billion, up 22% from second quarter 2011. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 28%.
  • Worldwide Media sales grew 13% to $4.12 billion. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 15%.
  • Worldwide Electronics and Other General Merchandise sales grew 38% to $8.16 billion. Excluding the unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, sales grew 42%.
  • Amazon.com announced that developers can now submit mobile apps for distribution through our upcoming appstore launches this summer on the Company’s U.K., German, French, Italian and Spanish sites. In just over one year, the Amazon Appstore on www.amazon.com has grown to tens of thousands of apps and games. For additional information, visit https://developer.amazon.com/welcome.html.
  • Amazon.com introduced “GameCircle,” an all-new gaming experience for Kindle Fire, and released a series of APIs for developers to add this new experience to their games. GameCircle offers gaming customers a series of features such as achievements, leaderboards, and sync that make gaming even more fun, convenient and social on Kindle Fire. The newly-released GameCircle APIs will help game developers quickly and easily integrate their games with GameCircle, allowing them to grow their business by reaching new customers and keeping them engaged. For additional information, visit http://amazon.com/gamecircle.
  • AWS relaunched AWS Support with the expansion of free support for all AWS customers, a reduction in pricing on premium support plans and adding multiple new features to help customers better interact with and improve their use of AWS, including chat functionality and proactive alerts when opportunities exist to save money, improve system performance, or close security gaps. The price reduction marked the 20th time AWS has lowered prices since its launch in 2006. For additional information, visit http://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport.
  • Amazon announced the Amazon Career Choice Program, providing employees with a resource for building the job skills needed for today’s most in-demand and well-paying careers. For employees who’ve been with Amazon as little as three years, the program will pre-pay 95% of the cost of courses such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields.

Financial Guidance

The following forward-looking statements reflect Amazon.com’s expectations as of July 26, 2012. Our results are inherently unpredictable and may be materially affected by many factors, such as fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, changes in global economic conditions and consumer spending, world events, the rate of growth of the Internet and online commerce and the various factors detailed below.

Third Quarter 2012 Guidance

  • Net sales are expected to be between $12.9 billion and $14.3 billion, or to grow between 19% and 31% compared with third quarter 2011.
  • Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(350) million and $(50) million, down from $79 million in the comparable prior year period.
  • This guidance includes approximately $275 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions, investments, or legal settlements are concluded and that there are no further revisions to stock-based compensation estimates.

A conference call will be webcast live today at 2 p.m. PT/5 p.m. ET, and will be available for at least three months at www.amazon.com/ir. This call will contain forward-looking statements and other material information regarding the Company’s financial and operating results.

These forward-looking statements are inherently difficult to predict. Actual results could differ materially for a variety of reasons, including, in addition to the factors discussed above, the amount that Amazon.com invests in new business opportunities and the timing of those investments, the mix of products sold to customers, the mix of net sales derived from products as compared with services, the extent to which we owe income taxes, competition, management of growth, potential fluctuations in operating results, international growth and expansion, the outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, risks of inventory management, seasonality, the degree to which the Company enters into, maintains and develops commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, and risks of fulfillment throughput and productivity. Other risks and uncertainties include, among others, risks related to new products, services and technologies, system interruptions, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. In addition, the current global economic climate amplifies many of these risks. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com’s financial results is included in Amazon.com’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.

Our investor relations website is www.amazon.com/ir and we encourage investors to use it as a way of easily finding information about us. We promptly make available on this website, free of charge, the reports that we file or furnish with the SEC, corporate governance information (including our Code of Business Conduct and Ethics), and select press releases and social media postings.

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References to prices on this website refer to prices on the main Amazon.com website for US customers. Prices will vary for readers located outside the US, and prices for US customers may change at any time. Always check the price on Amazon before making a purchase.

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