[jerf]

That last one is why Amazon is the one to watch. They have a plausible "sell the Kindle-pad at a moderate loss" scenario, in that they have numerous for-pay services they can hawk from a privileged position on their tablet, and with Amazon Prime's integration with their video service, a plausible way to turn a Kindle-pad into a recurring revenue stream as well, a recurring revenue stream that encourages additional one-time purchases of media content.

Contrast this with Google, where I don't think even "lots of ads" is enough of a per-customer-value proposition to enable them to take a couple hundred off a tablet's price very easily.

[cube13]

I honestly don't think that Amazon or Barnes and Noble consider their devices to be iPad competitors, though. They're selling them as eReaders that just happen to be able to play Angry Birds, not as full-featured tablets.

[jerf]

That's what they are selling them as... now.

Have you seen this? http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=sa_menu_aiv_piv_t10?ie=UTF8&... Or anything else on the left sidebar under "Instant Video". Or their music plays. Or http://www.amazon.com/mobile-apps/b?ie=UTF8&node=2350149... .

There's a lot of things they've been doing over the past year or two that makes a lot of sense in the context of planning to create a blessed Amazon media player. It does not exist yet, but it's hard to imagine it won't.