Odd. Strongest ever sales surge Kindle product line higher despite consumer complaints?!

From Black Friday on, Kindle Fire and the Kindle product line has been stoking Amazon’s sales online and off. Consumers of tablets and e book readers have been buying kindle at best buy and kindle at Target stores at a torrid rate. Black Friday sales, 2011, of Amazon’s Kindle line of products flew of the virtual and retail shelf at 4x s the rate of last year’s Black Friday Kindle sales.

In spite of users disgruntled feedback on Kindle Fire’s, sales are surging for the Kindle Fire and the Amazon Kindle e book reader product line. How fast are Kindle e book reader products selling? Over 1 million Kindle devices a week have been sold for nearly the fourth week in a row. This is a torrid pace for any product much less e book reader related devices.

Kindle Fire Consumer Complaints.

Several device features have been criticized by Kindle Fire users. Power button is often hit on accident and cuts the device off. Touch screen isn’t responsive enough so users are forced to repeat touch commands. No physical or exterior volume buttons interrupts applications since they have to use the software and open the volume control application.

Silk’s browser is also the target for complaints. Web pages are loading too slowly. Amazon is working on a software fix that ought to be released shortly. It wouldn’t make sense for Amazon to allow users to complain about software or the device as they simply use the device as a veritable sales trojan horse. Once Kindle devices are purchased they are the gateway for Amazon to make money off sales from their millions of products. It is widely know that the Kindle Fire loses at least $79 for Amazon Inc with each sale. The $199 price is appealing for users wanting to spend money on apps, e books, music, newsletters, Hulu Plus, Netflix, other movies, and the list goes on…

Losing Money To Make Customers Happy

In all honestly, this first round Nook Tablet out “tableted” Kindle Fire regarding features. Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire comparison is pretty straightforward. I prefer the e book readers turned tablets because the Ipad is too expensive unless you want a low functioning lap top to run apps. Barnes and Noble and Amazon both have an enormous store to buy e books, movies, and music. Future generation Kindle Fire devices ought to be even more functional. As is, the Kindle Fire is still a very good functioning low end price-wise tablet that give you great bang for the buck.

Why else would it’s fans weather the complaints and continue to drive record sales to kindle product lines? This year the e reader product line should be the most gifted and bestselling product on Amazon.com’s long list of seasonal gifts. Kindle devices are moving at a torrid pace – let’s see if their developers can keep up.

I don’t see Amazon abandoning the high level user experience any time soon for short term profit. Let’s see!

Barnes and Noble sells the second most e readers on the market today. Many consumers want to know the latest product on the shelf and which nook is the best to buy. Others are simply comparing usability and looking for the best e reader to buy overall.

Comparitively, the Nook Tablet stacks up well against many of the competitors. Doing well in price, functionality, and speed compared to other e readers turned tablets you can buy.

Don’t be alarmed by the music you hear from the speakers on your computer. There is a short video playing at the bottom of the article illustrating the Nook Tablet. Just like the table below, it is short, to the point, and informative.

All in all, the Nook Tablet has the large app and content library along with a superior system and up to date operating platform, Android 2.3. It offers more flexibility for e readers looking to buy books or music with additional multi media options (movies and T.V. episodes). You can find which Nook to buy at Barnes and Nobles or through the many e book reader reviews posted here.

According to a recent survey holiday gift survey, Kindle Fire is a preferred gift 3 to 1 compared to iPad. Starting at $199 for a Kindle Fire versus $499 for an iPad, Amazon has obviously targeted a larger demographic. Part of the broad appeal is… Kindle Fire can do it all.

Bang For Your Buck

Read books, watch movies, play games run android apps, check email, and overall do MOST things an Apple Ipad can do. In other words, Amazon Fire can do 75 to 85 percent of what an iPad can do (depending how much functionality you require) at 40 percent of the cost.

It’s a 7-inch tablet, which means that it’s half the size of an iPad or much closer in scale to a book. Making Kindle Fire much easier to read. Though heavier, Amazon’s tablet is surprisingly easy to grip. Though smaller, the Amazon Fire’s widescreen is nearly the same viewing range as a larger iPad as well as the viewing quality. Intuitive, easy operation by the user, makes me think Amazon should worry Apple.

Here is a brief demo of the Kindle Fire OS from an Amazon associate.

You basically have all the functionality of a later generation kindle with the basic functionality, graphics, and speed of a higher end iPad. The fervor over Kindle Fire was so great that pre-order sales were nearing the pre-order sales for the first generation of iPads released in 2010 (300,000). Final numbers aren’t in but clearly Amazon is giving Apple a run for it’s money in the tablet hype and ensuing sales. Below are the functionality and device specs for Kindle Fire.

Want the Kindle Fire’s Official Amazon Video? Stay tuned for other tablet reviews that are hitting the market plus side by side comparisons for the Kindle Fire and competing tablets.

Amazon’s Silk browser may just be the true difference maker in the tablet war. It may also be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Silk browser is unique in its raw efficiency but also in the amount of data Amazon can aggregate from the user. Since most of the user’s activity is basically stored on Amazon’s cloud servers, customer’s activity is tracked from where you log in to what site you visit.

This gives Amazon a better consumer footprint. It allows Amazon to track your behavior precisely to understand your behavior and consequently your buying tendencies. Sounds very big brother-ish. Well, Google, Yahoo, and Bing have been doing this for quite some time.

Don’t believe me?

Here is a basic disclosure for Google:

“When visiting a website, the IP address used to access the site will be logged along with the dates and times of access. This information is purely used to analyze trends, administer the site, track users movement and gather broad demographic information for internal use. Most importantly, any recorded IP addresses are not linked to personally identifiable information. But Google still uses general tendencies by the IP address user.”

Even if you don’t have a large footprint on social media sites you already are tracked via your ISP (Internet Service Provider) – mobile or land networks.

Sure it tracks your behavior. Sure it violates your privacy. And SURE you continue to use it. Why? Efficiency! Everyone does it. Hate to be trivial but it’s true. Just opt out when you can just like you did with Google, Yahoo, or Bing.

Disclosures out of the way, there are products and services the silk browsers will spawn.

Here are a couple of game changing developments possible for the Silk browser.

Split functionality with most processing done by the cloud server. This is what really differentiates Amazon’s Kindle Fire from all other beasts. Ipad. Now, Nook’s tablet. Here is how Amazon could leverage this service.

Bundling strategy. Low end devices – low price $100 to $150 for let’s say a year of free broadband. Compress the data through the cloud servers and do all the work on the backend. This could inspire a whole line of services with inexpensive front end devices connecting the user with movies, phone, broadband, and a range of other services.

You could get everything from one source. No need to even get basic cable with possible new developments. Now, this could be far in the horizon but these are possibilities if Amazon can monetize it and sell additional products through each service.

Dream Versus Reality

While it’s fun to dream, all the possible products aren’t here yet. Reality. Amazon isn’t offering Silk Browser for every device. Maybe this is a good thing.

Why? Amazon offers responsive software and supports to the devices that feature it currently (mainly the upcoming Kindle Fire).

Here is what Kindle Fire can accomplish, good and bad, through it’s competitive dual functioning browser.

Increases speed
Reduces the bandwidth requirement.
Enables faster memory/loading speeds based upon your past behaviors… predictive software.
Who cares if Nook’s tablet has twice the processing speed?

Increases privacy issues

Tracks personal and behavior information
Aggregates too much info in one place
Highly targeted advertising (if you like their products then this could be just fine for you)
-Already happening. Security issues are present in even 3rd party that use information gleaned from your behavior on google, Facebook and other social media networks and compile consumer profiles based upon your current behavior.

Trackable Behavior And What To Do

Your behavior and habits will transit/go through Amazon cloud. Carefully read Terms and Conditions of the browser. Opt out when you can if it bugs you they will serve targeting product ads to you. Don’t surf on sites you think they will remember and embarrass you with specific ads based upon sites you just visited.

Silk browser is the crucial link to bringing functionality, targeted marketing, and speed all together. Be informed and you’ll be fine!

If you own a Droid and you like the ease and accessibility of e book readers, the best free apps for droid might be the convenient Kindle app. Downloading the free Amazon Kindle app is a risk free way even tepid technology adapters can test the waters. Even iphone owners can get more out of their free apps by downloading the free kindle app.

As an avid “Amazon Kindle” user, I’ve found that downloading the free app and testing kindle features has helped me get the most from the Kindle experience.  Free and easy! In less than two minutes you can download the kindle app and start downloading content.

From the menu screen, you are one touch away from the Amazon Kindle Store to download books, magazines, periodicals, New York Times Bestsellers, Kindle Bestsellers, New and Noteworthy, Free Popular Classics, Recommended for You, and of course Kindle’s search bar. You can use this to find exactly what you’re looking for within Amazon Kindle for Droid.

Another handy feature is that the Amazon Kindle for Droid synchronizes with Kindle eBooks on your computer (computer not required however) and automatically returns to the last page of the most recent book or periodical you have read.  I love drinking coffee and browsing one of my favorite periodical like the Economist. Unlike the Kindle, the Droid screen is small and not easy on the eyes when you are reading for hours on end but I’m reading only an article or two while browsing for news.

As you are thumbing through periodicals (such as the Economist) recently viewed articles are auto-dimmed to keep track of which articles have been read. Easy to use search tools make the most of the enhanced digitized reading experience. Word or phrase that are highlighted allows for quick search of words and phrases on Wikipedia, Google, and throughout your periodical or e book with just a tap over the hypertext links.

One drawback. I’ve experienced errors downloading the dictionary for offline lookups continually, yet even bypassing this feature, the few touches needed to start a search leaves little wanting.

Periodical subscriptions like The Economist download automatically each week. From the initial book shelf screen, to title screens of periodicals, to the actual reading experience, the organization, viewing and search options make this app preferable to the traditional Bambi habitat killer paperbacks. The initial screen of the app automatically acts like a book shelf of unfinished and unread books, including an archived folder of finished reads, plus highlighted bullets below books titles that function as a bookmark. 5 font size options allow for ample content at ~90 words / screen at size 11 font, ~ 150 / screen at size 8 font,  and ~40 words / screen for the more visually impaired at size 15 font. The reading experience is quickly and easily adjustable with the in-app brightness adjuster and 3 font types 2 touches away from the active reading screen.

Though the Droid screen and viewing isn’t idea for users to read for hours on end, the personalization, customization, and easy use of catalogued e books and periodicals make Amazon Kindle app one of the best free apps for the droid.