Entries Tagged 'Amazon' ↓

The tablet component orders for the third quarter are in. No surprise, Apple is still miles ahead with orders between 14 and 15 million iPads on the way.

What is surprising is that Amazon has finally made a real, physical blip on tablet radar. According to DigiTimes, Amazon has ordered up to 1.2 million touch panels, a major component of tablets. Considering that the giant online retailer has not made an announcement nor verified rumors that it is releasing either smartphones or tablets, this is the first concrete piece of news that we have that Amazon branded devices outside the Kindle are on the way. Is Amazon showing too much confidence in its tablet strategy with its initial order?

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All Amazon has ever really said about a future launch of a tablet was when CEO Jeff Bezos told Consumer Reports to "stay tuned." That is not a denial nor tacit approval, but it does hint that Amazon tablets are on the way.

Amazon has been busy hiring Android developers, ostensibly to build Android application for various Amazon services such as the Kindle e-reader, an Amazon music player and Amazon Instant Video. Yet, just because Amazon has been hiring as many Android developers the company can get its hands on, that does not mean that a full capacitive touch tablet is on the way.

Analyst firm BMO Capital Markets released its predictions for the entire tablet vertical in early June and believed that Amazon would sell 3.5 million tablets this year. That is a pretty aggressive prediction from BMO for a tablet that will be ready by September at the earliest and thus has four months to sell (granted, in the back-to-school and holiday season).

If DigiTimes' sources are correct, then 1.2 million tablets (with a high end of 2 million) would put Amazon in the general range of selling between 2.5 million and 4 million tablets this year.

Amazon has the market traction to make this happen. The only company expected to sell more tablets than Amazon (other than Apple, of course) is Samsung, according to BMO. Samsung has a large head start on everybody else in the field not based in Cupertino and will soon have three different tablet sizes on the market.

Amazon now has its fingers in a lot of pies. It does personal and corporate cloud services, Web services (tied in with cloud), music, video, books, publishing, online retail of digital and physical goods, and was the creator of the original popular e-reader with the Kindle. After a couple of hiccups, most of the endeavors have proved successful.

That is why, when competitors are trimming their tablet orders, Amazon is ramping up. There is always the chance that Amazon joins the non-Apple ranks and takes a nosedive. Yet, does anyone think that is going to happen? With the company's knack for success, who is to say that an Amazon tablet won't take off as well?

In April, the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) warned its members to stay away from the Amazon Appstore because of "significant concerns" it had about the pricing, terms and policies Amazon had in place. And this week, the Appstore was once again in the news after an independent game developer called the store a "disaster" in a scathing blog post filled with complaints.

But are his issues the result of one bad experience or more indicative of an overall broken system? Let us know what you think in this week's ReadWriteMobile poll.

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GigaOm discovered the blog post by CEO Emil Romanus of Bithack, makers of the physics-based game Apparatus, and summarized the complaints as including:

• No device filtering
• Limited Consumer feedback
• Slow review process
• No recourse for incorrect reviews
• Cheap pricing

Even worse, Romanus said that Amazon hadn't followed up after featuring Apparatus as the Free App of the Day, and hadn't responded to his request to have the app pulled (at the time of the blog post's publication). He then warned developers, especially smaller ones, away from the Amazon Appstore entirely, saying he didn't see any reason why a developer would choose to publish there.

GigaOm noted that other developers have had the opposite experience at the store, and have been very pleased.

So what do you think, developers? Have you used Amazon to promote your apps? And would you recommend the store to others? Let us know in the poll below and in the comments, if you care to elaborate on your experiences.

Amazon has just launched a Facebook e-commerce store, but sadly it's not a Facebook-enabled version of Amazon.com. Instead, the new store is integrated into Procter & Gamble's Facebook page for Pampers. Yes, Pampers diapers.

Amazon's first big venture into Facebook-enabled selling is targeted at Facebook moms, who can also use the store to shop for other P&G products like laundry detergent and shampoo.

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Yes, Diapers. Boring Ol' Diapers

The news of Amazon's first Facebook store was first reported by TechFlash, but we've reached out to Amazon.com to confirm whether or not this is, in fact, the actual first, as details were not available in the press release.

Assuming it is, though, the choice makes sense. Those who have opted into to follow the Facebook fan page for Pampers are clearly the target market for buying the product.

The store front is made available via a tab at the top of the fan page which simply reads "Shop Now." Click the tab and you're taken to what is essentially, a micro-site dedicated to everything P&G, with a big focus on the leading product, the Pampers diapers. However, the left-side navigation also directs you to other products including "home care" items like laundry soaps and paper products and "personal care" items like deodorant, hair care and oral care products.

The Facebook store is powered by Amazon's Webstore service, a solution that helps customers build custom, branded e-commerce sites powered by Amazon.com. Facebook-enabled Webstores are not currently listed as one of the options or features of the service. That means this was a custom solution Amazon built for P&G, possibly as an experiment in the area of Facebook e-commerce.

But Wait! This is Bigger Than it Seems

I know what you're thinking: "Big deal, you can buy Pampers on Facebook. Who cares?"

But that's missing the point.

Buying diapers via a P&G-owned Facebook page is only the beginning. Although Amazon spokeswoman Tracy Ogden told TechFlash that the company "wouldn't discuss future plans" when asked if Amazon would be powering more storefronts in the future, we imagine it will. Facebook now has half a billion users now and many of them have opted into relationships with companies, brands and products through the use Facebook "likes." These are a company's best customers - the ones who are willing to watch the ads, share their opinions and check out the latest deals and discounts. It only goes to reason that they will buy the products, too.

Or so you would think. Interestingly enough, social commerce hasn't yet led to a large volume of sales, Forrester Research e-commerce analyst Brian Walker told TechFlash.

That broad statement seems to discount the successes some savvy brands have already seen leveraging social networks, though. Take Best Buy, for example. It, too, has an integrated shopping tab on its fan page. Only 6 weeks after its late 2009 launch, it helped the company grow its fan base from 27,000 users to 900,000 and sent traffic to its official website. 

If this topic interests you, note that Best Buy will be one of the companies presenting at analyst firm Altimeter Group's upcoming conference, "The Rise of Social Commerce." Other companies speaking at the event include Hallmark, Dell, Nielsen, Newell Rubbermaid, Virgin America and Zynga.

Buying diapers on Facebook may not seem exciting to you, but the potential for Amazon stores on Facebook certainly is.

Last night, Amazon sent out emails to their Amazon Associates members touting the latest addition to the company's affiliate program: a new feature called "Share with Twitter." According to the email, participants can generate "tweetable" links to any Amazon product after first logging into their Associates account. By clicking on the "Share with Twitter" button from any Amazon product details page, members are delivered to the Twitter.com website. Here, a shortened link and a bit of auto-populated text are automatically filled in Twitter's "What are you doing?" text box. The included text can be edited to say whatever they want before posting or they can choose to just post as is. After updating Twitter, any person who clicks through on the link and makes a purchase will earn the participant referral fees payable through the Associates program.

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Amazon Associates is Amazon's affiliate program whose original purpose was to help website owners generate links and banner advertisements which they could embed on their sites in order to generate additional income. The links could be text, images, or combinations of both while the banners were always full-color ads branded with Amazon.com's logo. For the most part, these sorts of advertisements are relatively easy to spot on participating blogs and websites. Save for the image links, which are just a picture of a product, everything else is clearly some sort of standard ad referring you to a particular product or service provided by Amazon.

The new Twitter links, however, are a whole new story. If an Amazon Associates member takes the time to re-write the text into their own words, there's virtually no way to know by looking at the post that the Twitter update is actually an ad.

Is Amazon Spamming Twitter?

In the past, several legitimate companies have diluted the Twitter stream with promotions and contests encouraging Twitter users to "tweet to win" so to speak, by pasting in some sort of marketing message into the "What are you doing?" box or by appending a promotional hashtag to their everyday messages. But unlike these company-run Twitter promotions, there's not a hashtag to use or any specific wording that has to be tweeted in order to participate in the Amazon Affiliate program. All anyone has to do is tweet links along with the message of their choosing.

Because Amazon's marketplace is extensive in terms of the products it sells, there's a wide variety of things which can be promoted. No matter what a Twitterer's particular interest is: music, politics, technology, etc., there's bound to be hundreds of things that could be mentioned in their Twitter stream without the posts appearing to be an ad. In fact, there's a good possibility that they would have been talking about these products anyway throughout the course of the day...they just couldn't have made any money off of them until now.

Hidden Advertisements

The problem with this sort of "hidden" advertising, though, is exactly that: it's hidden. This is the internet's version of "product placement" - subtle advertising in plain sight yet never clearly identified as such. Was your favorite TV star using a Macbook? Was he drinking a Coke? Already commonplace in Hollywood, these almost subliminal advertising messages permeate our consciousness every time we turn on the TV. Now that same sort of hidden ad will soon show up in the Twitter streams of your favorite tweeters.

Soon they'll start promoting a great book they just read, a DVD they liked, or one of a million other things pulled out of Amazon's vast inventory. None of it will sound out of place given the types of informal conversations that take place on Twitter every day. You won't even know that they're advertising to you until you click through on the link and find yourself on an Amazon.com webpage - and even then, you may not be sure. Was that a referral or were they genuinely just linking to the Amazon website to be helpful?

Will the FTC Step In?

Another question this raises, at least here in the U.S., is whether or not the FTC will get involved. Having recently taken steps to make sure that bloggers were properly disclosing freebies or payments received by companies whose products were being reviewed on their sites, one has to wonder if they'll now be tempted to monitor the undisclosed advertising that's about to explode on Twitter.

Amazon could have avoided the potential threat of government involvement (not to mention the accusations that they're "spamming Twitter") by generating their links using their own proprietary URL-shortening system, something like amzn.com or amz.com for example. That would clearly identify the tweets' purpose. But instead, they opted to make their links with the URL shortener bit.ly, the one that Twitter itself uses by default. This makes the Amazon links indistinguishable at a glance from any other shortened link posted to Twitter. There's no way to tell if a tweet is an ad unless the Twitter user left Amazon's auto-generated text in place. Of course, no one is going to use that text except the laziest of Twitter spammers - people you're probably already avoiding.

Tell Amazon What You Think with #AMZNSOT

Today, many Twitter users are coming out against this new type of Twitter-fueled advertising, registering their complaints via tweets marked with the #AMZNSOT hashtag, the official tag used to give Amazon feedback about the system. These users are already branding this new effort "spam," saying things like: "Amazon now gives you cash for spamming on Twitter? Oh, swell," as Twitter user TwitBin says. "Does this just mean more Twitter spam as people try to make money?" asks NickHerbert. But there are just as many Twitter users saying nice things about the new system too, calling it "cool," "awesome," "sweet," and even claiming it "rocks."

You can give Amazon your two cents as well by updating Twitter with your thoughts and including the #AMZNSOT hashtag along with your message.

Whether you think the new Amazon Twitter integration is good or bad, there's no doubt that it will be a major game changer for Twitter. As it blurs the lines between conversation and ads, people seem to think that Amazon has either created something of genius or has ruined Twitter as we know it. Few seem to be undecided when it comes to their feelings about this issue. The question is now: which side will end up being in the majority?

Online retailer Amazon.com has just announced a new checkout system called "PayPhrase" which speeds up the process of making online purchases by allowing shoppers to enter a unique phrase and 4-digit PIN number to complete their transaction. Both the phrase and PIN are created in advance and are linked to a shipping address and preferred method of payment. After the initial set up, PayPhrase users are no longer required to sign in or fill out credit card information when shopping online.

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Why PayPhrase Beats 1-Click

Amazon already has a similar speedy checkout system known as "1-Click." When activated, customers can associate payment methods with a frequently used shipping address, such as a home address, to quickly complete purchases without having to fill out their name, address, and credit card details.

Although not designed to replace 1-Click, the new PayPhrase system is even easier to use and more flexible. Using this system, shoppers don't have to be signed in to the site with an Amazon account as is necessary with 1-Click. That saves an extra step and could lead to more impulse buys as there's no "cooling down" time, however brief, between seeing something you want to purchase and then finalizing the transaction.

The PayPhrase system also allows for the creation of multiple PayPhrases and PINs so you can associate different addresses and methods of payment with each other. For example, you could additionally have a corporate credit card tied to your office address or a pre-paid credit card your children use tied to your home address. 1-Click checkout, on the other hand, only allows for the combination of one address and one method of payment.

The PayPhrase technology will go live across all of Amazon.com as well as on several third-party sites that use "Checkout by Amazon," a service that lets other retailers checkout customers by using their personal and payment information saved on Amazon's servers. At this time, DKNY, Jockey, Patagonia, Buy.com, J&R, and Car-Toys have announced they will add the PayPhrase system on their sites, too.

Is PayPhrase the Future of Mobile Transactions?

Clearly, the new PayPhrase technology has been designed to make online checkout easier, but could there be more to it than that? Earlier this month, the company launched a mobile payments service which allows mobile application developers to integrate Amazon's checkout system into their mobile software and mobile websites. The mobile payments system also allows for the integration of the 1-Click checkout process, so there's no reason to doubt that the PayPhrase technology will now also be added to the payments platform as well.

With PayPhrase, the process of making an online purchase takes far less steps than any other checkout system today. Even PayPal forces you to sign in, choose payment methods, and complete your transaction before being redirected back to the retailer's website. While a few extra steps aren't a big deal on the web, when you're on a mobile phone, every delay makes it that much harder thanks to slower internet connection speeds, tiny keyboards, and, more often than not, a lack of time to get involved in any long process. If you can't checkout in a minute or so, it's generally not even worth bothering until you're back at home on your broadband-connected PC. But with PayPhrase, you can checkout incredibly fast - only two steps are required: one to enter your special phrase and another to enter your PIN. Although Amazon hasn't made any formal announcements about integrating PayPhrase into their mobile platform just yet, they must have had it in mind when they designed this technology.

The Internet Archive has just unveiled their ambitious project called BookServer, which will allow users to find, buy, or borrow digital books from sources all across the web. The system, built on an open architecture and using open book formats, promises that the books housed there will work on any device whether that's a laptop, PC, smartphone, game console, or one of the myriad of e-Readers like Amazon's Kindle.

The project's lofty goal is to essentially create an open web of books where anyone can publish their books and make their content available via search.

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Any Book, Open Formats

Although still in the early days of development and potentially taking years to complete, the BookServer project will allow search engines to index books from all over the web. What that means for an end user is that you could type a title into a search engine and the engine would return results listing everywhere you could get that book in digital format including online bookstores, libraries, or a direct method from the publisher itself. Depending on your needs, you could borrow the book or purchase it and then download it to your digital device.

While the project isn't exactly a direct effort to take down Amazon's online bookstore or Google's upcoming online eBook store called Google Editions, it will provider book publishers and online libraries with the means to more effectively compete with those companies. By allowing publishers to set their own pricing and manage the distribution of their books, they will be able to take back control from Amazon and Google who would rather dictate those terms for them.

An Open Marketplace for eBooks

A secondary goal of BookServer's open system is to fight back against the proprietary marketplaces, such as Amazon's Kindle Store, where books are only sold in a copyright-protected format (.AZW) that only works on the company's eReader device, the Kindle. Elsewhere, some book sellers use other proprietary formats, others use the open ePub format, and still others distribute books as Adobe PDFs. For consumers, this multitude of choices only leads to confusion. People don't know what formats their particular device can read or where to get them. It brings to mind the similar issues consumers have had with digitally distributed music. To this day, many are still confused about whether their iTunes purchased music can play on other devices or whether tunes purchased from other online MP3 stores will play on their iPods.

While Google promises its Google Editions store will allow anyone to access digital books as long as they have a web browser and internet access, it's still unknown at this time how the company plans to make the digital content available offline. Will it require the use of special web browser plugins to do so? Until Google reveals more about the technical details, it is not possible to know how truly open their online store will be. And even if their store is 100% open, they are still a company whose ultimate goal is to profit from their work of digitizing books. BookServer's goal, on the other hand, is to provide universal access to book data made available in open formats.

Today, a few booksellers have partnered with the BookServer system including Feedbooks, O'Reilly, Adobe, and the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project.

Today, Amazon launched a new service which brings the company's payment processing tools to mobile devices. Called the "Amazon Mobile Payments Service," the technology includes a set of APIs (application programming interfaces) for mobile developers which will allow them to provide payment options to their customers within mobile websites and mobile applications. The new service also allows for integration of Amazon's "1-Click" checkout, the feature that lets customers make purchases using their credit card information stored within their Amazon.com accounts.

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For Customers: Mobile Shopping Made Easy

Customers using the new Mobile Payments Service (MPS) will first sign-in using an Amazon MPS-enabled phone or mobile application. After this initial authentication process, they'll then be able to make all future purchases from that device without having to sign in again. This includes the 1-Click checkout functionality. 

As the MPS website shows, it only takes four steps for a mobile shopper to complete their purchase using the new technology. First, the customer clicks on the "Pay with Amazon" button which directs them to a mobile site hosted by Amazon Payments. From there, the customer can pick which payment method they want to use from the options they already have on file with Amazon. After the payment is authorized, the customer is then automatically redirected back to the original mobile website where they can then be offered the download they just purchased.

For Developers: No Extra Work Required

Developers and merchants already using the company's Amazon Payments service on their websites won't need to do any additional development work - the service will automatically detect when customers are shopping from a mobile device and will switch over to the new mobile optimized payment interface.

In other words, that means that developers can continue to use Amazon FPS (flexible payment service) APIs they've already been using to build their applications and they don't need to go back and re-code anything to make the apps mobile-compatible.

One of the first companies to launch the Amazon MPS is Handmark, a mobile content store where customers can shop for games and applications across a number of platforms including Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Java devices. The company will integrate the technology within its online store and its on-device channels.

Developers interested in integrating this technology into their mobile applications can learn how to do so via the Amazon MPS website.