Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet
http://poway.patch.com/articles/kindle-fire-vs-nook-tablet-the-choice-depends-on-how-you-use-it-16fd1854
November 15 2011 is the important date for the Tablet market because Amazon’s Kindle Fire Tablet has been released today. Many people are predicting that there will be a breakthrough in the iPad 2 dominated Tablet Market because Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which has worse, but similar hardware, software, and functions as the iPad 2, is only $199 whereas the iPad 2 starts from $499. It is obvious that people, who can’t afford the iPad 2, but want tablets mainly for entertainment purposes, will most likely purchase the Amazon Kindle Fire. Yet, potential buyers have more to consider because Barnes and Nobles is releasing its own Nook Tablet for $249 on November 18th. I also believe that the competition between the Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet, and iPad 2 will be minimal because the iPad’s price range is way out of price ranges of Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet; one iPad is equal to two Kindle Fire or two Nook Tablets. However, the competition between the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet will be most likely be observed because the price difference between two tablets is only $50.
These two new tablets have almost identical hardware and software. Both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have a 7-inch, 1024×600-pixel color display, a 1-GHz dual-core processor. Both run highly customized versions of Google’s Android 2.3 operating system. Both have their own online apps and content stores, which are large and well established; Amazon’s and Barnes and Nobles’ online stores are as good as that of Apple. In addition, both tablets made it easy for users to access the media such as movie, music, and web browsing. Furthermore, both tablet’s primary function is reading electronic books and Amazon’s and Barnes Noble’s electronic book stores are well established.
The only major difference is that the Nook Tablet has more memory than that of Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire has 512 MB working memory, 8 GB storage memory, and access to online storage. On the other hand, the Nook Tablet has 1 GB working memory and 16 GB storage memory. Experts and columnists predict that people, who are mainly going to use tablets in wifi wired places, will prefer the Kindle Fire and people who travel a lot and need an extra storage will prefer the Nook Tablet.
However, I think differ. I predict that more people will prefer the Kindle Fire over the Nook Tablet due to the herding or information cascade. “An information cascade has the potential to occur when people make decisions sequentially, with later people watching the actions of earlier people and from these actions inferring something about the earlier people know” (Easley and Kleinberg 425). When the new technology is released, people tend to accept the technology that others already accepted.
The important fact to note is that the Kindle Fire is already released and the Nook Tablet is not. Although perspective buyers will research and analyze both tablets, they will also see others buying Kindle Fires before the Nook Tablet enters the market. As perspective buyers observe others, who already bought Kindle Fires, they will be tempted to join the crowd. Barnes and Nobles made a mistake of releasing the almost identical tablet three days later than its competitor. In three days, perspective buyers will watch their peers carrying Kindle Fires and most likely prefer Kindle Fires rather than tablets that no one possesses yet.