I suppose you might think that companies who build or license competing products are in the same business, with similar business plans. But that’s not always true.

Take Apple. You know precisely what butters their bread. They are in the business of selling hardware and services. Just about everything they sell is intended to deliver a good (some say high) profit, and they are experts at it. Consider how they manage to maintain those profit margins, even in areas where you just know their prices are equal or better than the competition. The struggles makers of tablets face to meet the cost of an iPad comes to mind.

With the release of the new Kindle Fire, you have to think that Amazon is in the business of making consumer electronics gear. That may be true, but not necessarily to do so at a profit. Indeed, what surprised some is the revelation that it costs more to build a Fire than the $199 sale price. Well, at least that’s the price that Amazon will charge when the gadget goes on sale in November. Some speak of a loss of up to $50 for each unit sold.

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I find it fitting that Amazon named their latest tablet computer the Fire. At $199 when it goes on sale in November, it is estimated by some analysts that Amazon will be losing $50 on each unit sold. But maybe thinking about fire sales is going a little too far.

In the real world of big business, it may seem strange to sell a new gadget at a loss, but Amazon is plying the old Gillette razor gimmick, which means they sell the core product cheap, hoping to make it up in profits from other merchandise sales.

So in this case, Amazon hopes you’ll load up your new Fire from their e-book library, and stream videos from their online service, not to mention all the other goods and services the company has available. Add it all up, and a loss will turn into a profit. At least that’s the hope.

Certainly printer makers have this marketing scheme down pat. You buy the cheap printer, and pay thousands and thousands of dollars for consumables over the unit’s lifetime. Now some of you no doubt buy those $50 starter printers, maybe expecting to just buy a new printer as soon as the ink is spent, but they get you on that too. Usually those printers offer cartridges with only a tiny capacity, so just buying them over and over again may not be so cost effective, not to mention where you’d store them once the ink is used. And, no, I’m only half serious here.

When you look at the Fire, it seems to closely resemble the failed RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, which is evidently because they are assembled in the same factory according to published reports, but why couldn’t they tweak the design a bit more? Amazon is using the Android OS, but it’s heavily laden with their own modifications, so it seems far removed from any other device using Google’s operating system.

The big negative is that the Fire has a 7-inch screen, and there’s no evidence whatever that customers will embrace that size. Steve Jobs has been vocal in stating that Apple decided not to build such a tablet because the display is just too small, with about 45% of the real estate of the iPad’s 9.7-inch display. You wonder if Amazon ever considered that, or perhaps they were hoping that, at $199, the Fire would be a relatively casual purchase, particularly for gift giving. With a starting price at $499, the iPad 2 is never a casual buy, even though the price is maybe half what analysts originally expected.

What’s more, for those who buy a Fire, what purposes does it serve best? Obviously, Amazon hopes you’ll store your reading library on it, and partake of their other products and services. The built-in Web browser sports a feature that Opera has already used, which is to render some pages courtesy of an intermediary caching server to speed up performance; yes, AOL did that too with their proprietary browser in the 1990s. But it will only come in a Wi-Fi version, which means you will have to rush to the hot spot if you’re on the road and need to get online. Curiously, the built in software doesn’t include such basics as a calendar, and there’s no mic or camera.

More to the point, the Fire appears best suited for reading, watching videos, and browsing. In other words, it’s a consumption device that merely expands upon the capabilities of the original Kindles. This is quite a contrast from the flexibility of a general purpose tablet, as exemplified by the iPad, not to mention the rich selection of software at the App Store.

As to how well it works in practice, it’s curious that the members of the media who attended Amazon’s rollout of the Fire weren’t allowed to actually use them. All they could see were canned demonstrations that seem to indicate good performance. But nobody will know for sure until the product is actually in the hands of reviewers. Contrast that to Apple’s penchant to let the media have hands on with new gadgets after many press events. Maybe Amazon is still fine-tuning the OS for performance? I don’t pretend to have an answer.

The real issue is whether you can call the Fire a direct competitor to the iPad. I think not, and not just because of the smaller screen size and the lack of key hardware features that are a given in a tablet these days. But people who cannot afford an iPad, or simply want something on which to read books, watch videos, and do some casual Internet serving, may lap them up in huge quantities. If anything, the companies who are building small Android tablets, such as Samsung, have a lot to fear from Amazon.

As to Apple, not so much. But truth be told, if there was any sales impact at all, I suppose Apple could just lop off $100 from the iPad’s purchase price and still make a decent profit. After all, the original development costs have been more than covered by now. Regardless, we already have pundits weighing on in an alleged tablet price war, as if selling something at a loss is the proper way to do business, even if you don’t have other products and services to offer to compensate for the loss. In any case, when it comes to the Amazon Kindle Fire, just color be skeptical.

It seems that it is becoming more and more difficult for Apple to keep secrets these days. Days before the official invitations went out, we already knew that Apple planned a media event for October 4th, and that it would take place at Apple’s corporate campus in Cupertino, CA, rather than at some exhibit hall in San Francisco. Besides, the airport in San José, the nearest major city, is not nearly as crowded, and Apple is saving money not having to rent someone else’s facilities.

Certainly, on the heels of the launch of the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, one expects that Apple might offer some response. In fairness to those who are checking pricing, remember that the Fire has a 7-inch screen, which Steve Jobs has already said is a bad choice for a tablet. Also, the Fire has only 8GB of storage, and these two factors will account for part of the price difference. At the same time, some have suggested Apple might be ready to drop $100 off the price of the iPad, since they’re making boatloads of money from it, enough to have more than compensated for their initial development expenses. Besides, it has already been reported that Amazon is selling their new gadget at a $50 loss per unit because they expect to make up the difference from the sale of books, movie rentals, and so on and so forth.

Reminds me of a printer. Then again, Apple may not say anything about the iPad or the Fire next week.

When it comes to the iPhone, the pundits are already attempting to parse Apple’s invitation. So the phone badge on the invitation displays the number one, which supposedly indicates that there will be only one new iPhone model, rather than adding a cheaper version for prepaid users and Asian distribution. On the other hand, maybe the badge signifies that this will be an all iPhone event, meaning that a single product line containing more than one model will be discussed, but nothing else, beyond, say, some general Apple updates about product sales and such.

See, I can parse these announcements too, and my speculation is as good (or bad) as any.

On the other hand, the invitation doesn’t specifically say that nothing else will be discussed, although the iPhone is the main topic on the agenda. Don’t forget about the iCloud launch and, perhaps, possible news about the next generation of iPods. Indeed, there’s already speculation that the Classic and Shuffle are gone, although I can’t see where Apple loses in selling the latter, a $49 device, which is a terrific casual purchase, particularly when times are tough.

As to the presentation, everyone just assumes that newly-minted CEO Tim Cook will attempt to display his chops at hosting such an event, but that much of the presentation will be farmed out to the usual Apple executives to cover their specialties. That way, Cook doesn’t have to dominate the stage. Besides, that’s pretty much what Steve Jobs has done in recent years, in large part to show that Apple is not the one man band in any respect.

But what about Jobs? Will he make a cameo appearance at the end of the session to provide a “one more thing” product introduction of some sort? Assuming the state of his health hasn’t deteriorated any, his presence for a brief time shouldn’t seriously upstage Cook, but would serve as reassurance that Apple’s co-founder is still on the job, even if he’s working fewer hours. If that happens, expect Apple’s stock price to go up another couple of percent as investors feel more and more reassured about Apple’s future.

As to the new iPhone itself, a minor refresh, using the same glass-based casings as the current model, would seem a huge disappointment. Besides, the iPhone stands apart from most other Apple gear, where aluminum is prominent. Indeed, the most common speculation has it that the iPhone 5 will be closer in concept to a miniature iPad 2, with an aluminum backing, and a front face in either white or black. And this time, the audience will laugh appreciatively when it’s announced that both colors will be shipping on the very first day.

As to actual availability, since both Apple and AT&T are blocking out vacations on the second week of October, you can’t miss by assuming the iPhone 5 will ship late that week. I still expect the iOS and iCloud updates to arrive, along with Mac OS 10.7.2, earlier that week. This way Apple can survive the worst of the server loads before initial iPhone sales and activations take over.

Aside from a possible iPod announcement, I do not expect to hear about any iPad refresh, nor anything necessarily Mac related except, perhaps, to boast about the success of the Lion launch, and how many millions of Mac users have upgraded to 10.7.

One thing is sure: You cannot take anything I say to the bank. As I said in the headline, I’m shooting from the hip here, but most tech pundits aren’t doing anything different.

As most of you know, netbooks became a fad for a while a couple of years back. With the recession in full force, folks welcomed the chance to buy a small but supposedly fully-equipped Windows note-book for a pittance. Indeed, prices often dipped below $300, although manufacturers soon piled on the features in order to increase the final transaction price.

Well, the arrival of the iPad demonstrated that a lot of people simply wanted a low-cost computing device that could get the essentials done, such as Internet access and email, and add a little pizzaz for the times you needed more. The iPad accomplished all this with an elegant interface that was simple to master. Even better, there were tens of thousands of apps available to read books, play games, and even perform some productive work.

As you might expect, sales of netbooks from such companies as Acer crashed, but it wasn’t just because the iPad arrived, since it still costs more than the cheapest netbook.

Why the netbook failed was pretty obvious when I had an up close and personal encounter with an Acer model just recently. I had visited a client to set up a new Wi-Fi router, when I was asked to set up his girl friend’s netbook to access his network.

The router, by the way, was a Cisco/Linksys E1500. You might ask why not an Apple AirPort, but the Linksys sells for less than $60 with the typical discount. The AirPort costs $179. Granted you get better performance, but not three times better, so this was a decent deal for my client. Also, the Cisco Connect app is usually fairly simple to configure, since it gives the router a unique network name, and a pretty strong password.

As to that netbook, it was black and shiny and, typical of PC note-books, laden with labels haphazardly stuck onto the device; the model number was barely visible, so I didn’t record that information. Unfortunately, the tiny trackpad had a label illustrating its extra touch features, which made it impossible to use, but the woman told me she just used a wireless mouse. And, yes, she never put the thing on her lap.

At first, I rejected the mouse, figuring the trackpad ought to be sufficient. Yes, the cursor seemed to move with reasonable fluidity, although it needed a speed up. But it’s fair to say that a typical new Mac also has a slow cursor setting be default and, with the Magic Mouse, it may never be fast enough unless you install one of those add-on utilities that provides a decent level of acceleration.

In any case, I ran into a roadblock when I tried to press the Acer’s trackpad button, and confronted an amazing amount of stiffness. You had to press real hard for it to engage, and I’ll grant that maybe that particular unit was defective. But in the PC world, you never know, and maybe that’s all you should expect from a computing gadget that costs less than $300.

Maybe Acer doesn’t care, or they expected customers to buy wireless input devices to replace the tiny trackpad and sticky button. So forget about perfect portability.

I spent a short time examining the netbook, to see if I could get a feel for it and even, had it a better trackpad button, actually find it useful. I ran Internet Explorer, and got fairly decent rendering speed on my client’s broadband connection. No mail client was installed, since owner accessed her account with Webmail.

But actually typing on the thing proved a non-starter. The keyboard was narrowed, to fit the smaller form factor, and it almost seemed as if I had to learn typing again. The keys were sticky, not fluid, so even if my fingers would become accustomed to the tinier layout, comfort went out the window.

Now in all fairness, typing flexibly on the iPad’s touchscreen is no picnic either. It’s not designed for lengthy text entries. If you want to edit a document in Pages, or type a few short sentences, fine and dandy. Otherwise, you buy an external keyboard, although that works against the iPad’s ultimate portability factor.

But you have to understand that the iPad isn’t necessarily meant to replace any personal computer, although it might do just that for many of you. Instead, it is a an auxiliary device that serves a variety of functions in super slick fashion, including that of a portable game player, and there’s where traditional gaming console makers are suffering big time.

That Acer netbook exhibited no intelligence whatever in its design.  The PC makers simply shrunk them down, used the cheapest parts possible, and to hell with usability. No wonder they failed.

Oh, and in case you wanted to know, I suggested to that netbook’s owner that she take it back to the dealer and get something that actually worked. I even suggested she consider buying a used MacBook if she couldn’t handle the cost of, say, a new MacBook Air. You can get an early version for around $600 in a good state of repair from a used dealer, and several hundred dollars less at eBay. Even the very cheapest MacBook, assuming it was fully functional and without blemishes on the case, would be a far better deal than that netbook.