What would you think about a company that, whenever they enter a new market, the media is ready to declare failure? What would you think if that declaration comes despite the fact that, in the past decade, those new products have been amazingly successful? Would you begin to think that too many members of the press need a reality check?
So just this week, there’s a report that Amazon may build a smartphone to compete with Apple. No doubt they’d follow the Kindle Fire playbook, delivering a product at cost in the hopes that people will use the gadget to access Amazon’s storefront and buy lots of stuff.
Since the story comes from Bloomberg, a respected source of business news, you have to take it seriously. Or maybe Amazon is floating a trial balloon. The assumption is that it would go up against the iPhone in the same way that the Kindle Fire went up against the iPad. Only the Kindle Fire mostly grabbed market share from small Android tablets. It doesn’t look as if iPad sales actually suffered.