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Good to Go #5: Amazon Battles iTunes

2011-03-31
hey what's going on everybody happy Thursday happy opening day of Major League Baseball happy almost final for a weekend i'm wearing my my old year 2000 Final Four shirt here I'm Noah crowds from TechnoBuffalo now I'm James Kendrick from ZDNet mobile news welcome to good to go where we get together once a week we've been doing this for at least a month now so I guess it's a regular thing congrats to ah it's real it's real it's real James and I get together and you know just talk mobile tech what's going on in the world of mobile tech so thanks for tuning in last week I was worried about my basement flooding today it's about 81 and sunny here in Oakland so I don't spring is sprung or the globe is warming or what but but I'll take it hey dude dance what's going on down there in Houston no just keeping busy as always and getting ready for the big April first tomorrow of course who knows what that will bring to the Internet the internet it will not be a safe place tomorrow no I think that everyone stay off the everyone stay off the internet all day except for ZDNet mobile news there you go there you go I'm supposed to say an technobuffalo now yeah yeah yeah you were you were you were as yeah I'm a little celebrated the weather's got me got me feel is a coffee speaking of coffee if you would like to sponsor good to get now I'm not gonna throw that in there but you know would you know where to find us yo um we were saying before we came on the air let's talk about Amazon let's talk about Amazon the App Store the cloud player I was speculating on on our site week or so ago that I think they're really well suited I think they're better suited than anybody possibly to take on Apple in terms of the the tablet market and just the whole mobile device market which which might sound strange but androids there to be used amazon has the experience the infrastructure the digital content you know movies books music TV shows it's an interesting position they're in and they're making these little moves that you know if they never put the pieces together so to speak into anything larger they're still big time moves they're still you know the app store almost arguably beating Google at their own game in terms of an android market now the cloud player you know that they've been doing a lot I before we came on the air jam to use the word disrupter is that a word you want to use on the air here yeah sure I I think that Amazon is deliberately in a position to disrupt the mobile space because I don't think the other companies that play in the mobile space expected this because we've seen some knee-jerk reactions from several things that they've done the App Store you mentioned the cloud drive and and I the cloud drive that was released this week in conjunction with the cloud player you mentioned is significant because it it really legitimizes their ecosystem for Android and that's that that's something for somebody who's not even playing in the Android space not outside of the app store yeah but they have the whole ecosystem there I think they're ready to take apple on head head to head and I think they they can you think they're going to do it with a piece of hardware I do I I have speculated for a long time that they're probably going to release some kind of tablet now that tablets are hot mm-hmm and I think that Billy eventually even get into smartphones because I tell you what with mainstream consumer we always on the our show talk about mainstream consumers are the only ones with enough dollars to make a difference right all right I tell you what the Amazon tablet yeah yeah mazon thumb that's already got street cred yeah I mean just as soon as it's released that it's out there with Emma I haven't been on amazon in a few days but they were I something I still are you know advertising kindle is their all-time most sold product yeah and barnes and noble some figure just came out that they sold an estimated three million colors so that's you know three million devices isn't on the volume of an iphone or you know what Samsung's doing but that's a good chunk for you know an e-reader marketed by you know barnes and noble the number two online bookseller so imagine like you said imagine what amazon could do if they you know and they could bundle in all sorts of things i mean it's not just limited the thing that that's interesting and trying to read the tea leaves and thinking about this one of the things interesting to me is there video service the the instant video you know it's not on a netflix level center and itunes level but it's interesting start and they're bundling it for free with prime and so you know prymaat my family subscribes to prime and we use it all the time it there's a jingle in there i just started to write about using prime at the time I don't know but you know it's to get that two day shipping there's so many things amazon sells etc etc and then you throw in the streaming media with it but if you look at it from the other way you know they can advertise to somebody hey you can have all the the instant media you want sent to your amazon tablet and as a bonus you get you know free two-day shipping all year and just look at all the other stuff we have to sell you and they're really in this this interesting position where they've got the digital content of infrastructure where with all the challenge these other players but then they've got stuff that nobody else has which is you know they sell toilet paper or you know cat food or whatever it is it's really i kind of makes my head spin a little bit oh I see them wrapping their entire business up in to a an Amazon tablet if you if you will I mean it's all going to be timely integrated back when they first announced or or it there android app store was a rumor way back when I said boy they're going to just take over because they're going to do it like they do their mp3s they're going to do a free app a day I mean they're gonna they're gonna suck you in because they're their masters at retail online retailers their their business and their and they are doing it I mean exactly and they sucked us in already with the cloud drive I mean they said do you get you get five gig of free storage all you have to do is get our free mp3 of the day right right and you have an account right and it's free yep it's like all right you're already in yeah I know Amazon customers are already in and it's going to all be wrapped up into an Android device of some kind which I think will be a tablet and it's going to be it's going to be full-featured android tablet like all the millions of them others that are coming along but it's going to have all of the tight integrated amazon stuff right yeah and and they're gonna they're gonna pitch it and they're going to get us to use it because they're gonna say you know what if you uh any order made off of our amazon tablet will get red bumps better shipping right right you know that that's what they do yep and and you're gonna say well i should give me a tablet because i buy retin up from amazon every year that's going to be free i do that i do that math all the time to jump to buy my own you know gadget purpose they're guilty pleasure purchases right and like oh it's a three-hundred-dollar tablet and if i spend four bucks on shipping all i have to do is you know by one thing a week and then my tab will only cost me fifty bucks and okay the next thing i know you know my house is full of uh you know giant boxes of Mike and Ikes yes I waste through the right here but that makes my dentist happy to so you know it's and that's how they're going to get people who baby don't particularly care for android right they don't even have to decide it's not going to really be Android it's gonna be the Amazon God amazon it's almost like you know the google phone that whole thing about there's going to be a google phone there's going to be a google phone and there wasn't a google phone there's a Google ecosystem there's a google you know platform and it's almost like oh well maybe this is really the google phone but it's not the google phone it's the amazon phone i don't know i'm just getting that sort of DejaVu and and it but it but it sort of makes much more sense because Google's not a retail company you know amazon amazon is Amazon's got a lock on this whole thing and i really think they'll end up giving apple a run for their money yeah and I mean forget other Android players because they're going to want they're going to win that battle when they enter the the game because they're there already bigger than they are right and all the rest of those so this case is it's an interesting time to be covering the Mobile's it isn't in my opinion maybe if they were this one will I know it we have to sort of had to go from being you know mobile people to then being you know sort of de facto music player and camera experts when you know multifunctional smartphones came out now we're like you know fake business guys or at least I feel sort of like yeah analyze nothing maybe we'll see a Barnes & Noble ebay group on tablet next you know if the amazon thing takes up I don't think they could compete all right before before we wrap this up I'm putting you on the spot here but final four in your town this weekend any predict us um and I'd like to see VCU do something sure being just being the Cinderella team but no I don't know it's it's tough but this has been a weird year it really has i MA I'm with you like everybody else i'm on the Cinderella bandwagon i'm pulling for VCU I think UConn's gonna do it though yeah you get a you get a hot guard like Walker and you can win the tournament and you know anyway whoever hits the threes right yeah Wow gonna walk away with James enjoy your weekend I will be watching from up here in Oakland myself and let's do it again next week that stood sounds good alright till next time it's good to go with me Noah crimes from technobuffalo and me James Skinner from ZDNet mobile news all right and James folks want to find your blog online the URL is zdnet com / blog / mobile dash news and all you would be sponsors you can just use that address to you'll find us some until next time man have a good one we'll talk to you all right see you see it you
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