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Amazon could be looking to directly challenge Apple and Samsung

Amazon has become one of the biggest companies in the tablet market with its Kindle Fire and the new Kindle Fire HD tablets. With Amazon wanting to put pressure on Apple in the tablet market, it would make sense for the company to work on securing processors for its future assault. 
 
Reuters reports that Amazon is in talks with Texas Instruments to purchase its mobile processor line. If the negotiations are successful and Amazon acquires the mobile processor line, it would make the online retail giant a direct rival to Apple and Samsung Electronics. Apple and Samsung Electronics are two giants in the smartphone and tablet market that also design their own chips.
 
By securing its own source of processors for tablets and smartphones, Amazon would have more control over the design of the parts and the performance of its products. Amazon currently uses Texas Instruments chips in its Kindle Fire tablets.


Kindle Fire HD
 
Texas Instruments has already admitted to wanting to shift its wireless investment focus from smartphones to a broader market aiming for clients in the automotive sector and others where it hopes to be more profitable and stable.
 
Neither Amazon nor Texas Instruments have offered an official statement at this time.

Sources: The Next Web, Reuters


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This does not make any sense to me.
By Netscorer on 10/15/2012 2:11:31 PM , Rating: 5
Amazon purchasing TI just to have their own say on what processors they want in the next Kindle is a moronic move. Amazon is not in the electronics business. They are in the retail business and buying the entire production chain (or a part of it), makes no sense. Given their scale, they would be in a much better shape creating a strategic relationship with the same TI, giving them access to the design boards but insulating them from the very volatile electronic chip production business.
Besides, something tells me that what processor you have inside your next tablet is not going to be a deciding factor for winning a customer. Processors now are good enough for smooth operation and most of mobile software developers just are not agile enough to follow the CPU power increase curve and using it to the full extent. To consumers screen quality, batter life, speakers, camera and other components are more important rather then what frequency the latest chip can run at.
Amazon is good at creating content ecostructure around their business and refining that and pushing to international markets will be the deciding factor on how they will fair in the long run.




RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By retrospooty on 10/15/2012 2:39:44 PM , Rating: 2
" Processors now are good enough for smooth operation and most of mobile software developers just are not agile enough to follow the CPU power increase curve and using it to the full extent. "

This is true, I would guess the move is more about money... IF you make your own chips, you can cut out the middle-man and and therefore pocket the profits the middle man reaps... Also, they would probably be welling OMAP processors to other vendors as well.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By othercents on 10/15/2012 2:48:26 PM , Rating: 3
What it looks like they are purchasing is the design staff and architecture for the processors. This probably wouldn't include any fabrication facilities which they would still need to outsource to TI or another company to fabricate.

This might be a good move for Amazon especially since they are in the hardware business with their Kindles now. Instead of trying to build a team of processor designer specifically for their product they have an opportunity to buy one. This will allow them to build processors to meet their Kindle architecture needs and possibly come up with a design that performs on par with the Apple designs.

Other


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By retrospooty on 10/15/2012 2:53:21 PM , Rating: 2
Now they need to work on the UI team... The Fire HD's have great specs for the price, but the UI is utter crap. Its like Android pre-school version. I took one look at it and went with a Google Nexus 7.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By Netscorer on 10/15/2012 5:08:58 PM , Rating: 3
And you made a mistake. Besides the home screen, it does not matter if you use Nexus or Kindle Fire. App is an app. And home screen actually works fine, highlighting the most recent apps you opened. No Android launcher does it for you. Widgets is the only thing truly missing. But I realized that the only widget I use all the time is Beautiful widgets (i.e. Clock + Weather). I still prefer full app interface for all other widgets.
As for hardware, Kindle beats Nexus handily. Twice amount of on board storage, brighter and better screen, out of this world speakers, dual-band MIMO 801.11n Wi-Fi, better build quality, etc. The only thing that Nexus has going for it is Tegra quad-core CPU... and about dozen apps that actually take advantage of it.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By retrospooty on 10/15/2012 6:52:50 PM , Rating: 2
Meh, i disagree on alot of that (build quality, better screen), and the rest, I dont care about (dual band 80211.n , speakers). To me OS is 1st and formost. I am running 4.1.2, it came out the day after I bought it last week... Fast as hell, I mean its crazy fast... Noticuably faster than my GS3 even... and the Kindle is laggy. It's lag brings Android back 2 years... Unacceptable.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By Netscorer on 10/15/2012 7:25:35 PM , Rating: 2
Did you try new Kindle Fire HD? If there is one thing, it's not laggy. Interface has been twicked quite a bit and is very smooth. They still have some work to do on predictive caching (for example, when switching between library and store views on Amazon apps) but rather then that I was very impressed with UI response. And I own Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, so I know what Jelly Bean feels like.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By retrospooty on 10/15/2012 7:32:17 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, I did, it was a 7 inch HD and laggy as hell. Reviews all over the place agree.

http://bit.ly/OD56i8

I didnt notice it in the UI, just on webpages. Every single page that is large enough to need to scroll more than a few pages lags, and lags bad, and that is an in store model without users apps loaded.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By Reclaimer77 on 10/15/2012 8:28:55 PM , Rating: 2
So a brand new device had a small issue that will be fixed in a patch?

Just saying, my old Kindle Fire surfs just great. Pretty sure this wont be a lasting issue on the new one with better hardware.


By retrospooty on 10/15/2012 9:41:36 PM , Rating: 2
I am sure it will be fine once fixed, but that and the ui made it an easy choice for me.


RE: This does not make any sense to me.
By tayb on 10/15/2012 3:10:23 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Processors now are good enough for smooth operation and most of mobile software developers just are not agile enough to follow the CPU power increase curve and using it to the full extent.


Known anti-pattern! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat

I hope Amazon isn't blaming the sluggish Kindle Fire performance on the chipset. Sure, increasing chip performance will likely alleviate the performance problems but you're attacking the effect and not the cause. Older versions of Android aren't as fast as 4.0+ but they aren't THAT slow. Their development team needs to spend more time on optimization. Throwing them a faster CPU just continues the cycle... hence the anti-pattern.


Servers
By Ammohunt on 10/15/2012 2:04:19 PM , Rating: 3
Not to mention a slick way to get into the emerging ARM Cloud server market.




Vertical integration
By Motoman on 10/15/2012 11:39:42 AM , Rating: 2
Economics 101.

And then if anyone else wants to use TI chips, Amazon can say "no" :p

...just to spite them. Not that TI is the only option around by any stretch.




well to be fair...
By inperfectdarkness on 10/16/2012 5:17:15 AM , Rating: 2
TI technically did bring one of the smartphone's precursers to market in it's take on the graphing calculator. Granted, Casio did it first, but TI made it into a device that could be used as a PDA, game playing, etc.

I have a special love for TI ever since I grew up using a TI 99-4A




"We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk." -- Apple CEO Steve Jobs











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