With today’s introduction of the Kindle Fire, there’s been a lot of comparison with tablets, especially the iPad.  I’ve seen it called anywhere from the iPad killer to another failed iPad competitor.  My take is that anywhere in this spectrum misses the point of the Kindle Fire entirely.

Apple’s profit strategy is to create a media ecosystem which is used to sell their high margin iOS hardware.  Amazon’s strategy is the opposite; Amazon wants to sell their media on any hardware.  Amazon doesn’t care if you consume their media on an Apple, Android, Amazon, or PC device or even from the web evidenced by the Kindle App available on all the aforementioned platforms.  They just want you to consume their media which is their bread and butter.

The Kindle Fire is simply an inexpensive portable media player.  It’s priced below tablets for all the people who aren’t willing to pay the price for a full tablet with a larger screen, more storage, microphone, cameras, etc.  It allows portable media consumption for a low hardware entry price which allows Amazon to expand their market.

Meanwhile, I believe this leaves out tablet owners who don’t want to carry around another device.  This leads me to believe that that the Kindle App for those tablets may be expanded beyond books to audio and video media.  A Kindle Fire App if you will.

I figured someone attending Amazon’s event would have asked if/when the Kindle Fire App was coming or Amazon itself would have mentioned it.  Yet a quick Google search seems to reveal nothing.  Odd.