Amazon Tablet Rumors: What if they're true?

{EAV_BLOG_VER:12a8ae1d61ba62ef}Image via CrunchBaseAmazon is a very forward thinking company. My personal experience working for them at a customer support call center gave me a chance to see how they work to make their company better every single day. Not only was the organization extraordinarily fast paced it was also very customer centric bending over backwards at times to make a customer happy. Why would I preface this post in such a way? Well Amazon is a household name for a reason and with their first foray into consumer electronics they were successful in large part because they have had such laser-like focus on the consumer experience. This will be the key to their rumored second consumer device reportedly coming in fall this year.
The tech part of this is important. Amazon has one of the best libraries of Video's on Demand of any company. While Netflix is unarguably the monster in this category, Amazon has a very respectable catalog that warrants attention. Netflix, and Hulu Plus are services that have made the transition to tablets and this transition is important to their future success as these devices become our primary connection to the world and entertainment. Amazon's creation of a tablet follows on surprise moves like the Amazon App store that sells Android Apps. This new store allows them to leverage their huge retail presence and the digital accounts associated with it to rival the Android Market by Google. But this store is more of an opportunity to support their new Android powered tablet and that tablet, like the Kindle before it, could be a huge deal. If Amazon puts all of their current apps on this new tablet and announces a new app with the tablet they could enter the tablet wars as a legitimate force. So what app do they need to introduce still? AmazonVOD (Video on Demand) for Android would allow them to enter the tablet market more prepared to do battle than almost any other Android tablet released or rumored to be released. While working there over a year ago I mentioned that they needed to make such an appliance...low and behold here it comes. No doubt it's been in the works longer than that but it's like they were reading my mind. With this product they would be positioned so well to compete with Apple that Motorola, Samsung, Dell, and other Android tablet manufactures would seem like second class citizens in the market. I make this assertion on the fact that none of those organizations is paired with a content source that comes anywhere near rivaling Apple or Amazon. Apple has iTunes and thousands of movie titles that are available for rent/purchase with ease. If Amazon plays their cards right (and they almost always do) they will be THE Apple iPad competitor. Between their cloud MP3 service and cloud drive offering they'll be able to point to cross platform functionality from almost any consumer entertainment or computing device. Apple has this only in so much as you have lots of Apple products. If Amazon is able to add uploading and streaming of movies like they do music they will have one up on Apple and will be able to draw the iPad2 and it's lesser competitors back to the drawing board.
Of course all of this is speculation at least until this holiday season when all our entertainment dreams come true thanks to Amazon.