Outside Innovation

Amazon Fires a Shot Across Apple's (and Google's?) Bow(s)

I love the new Amazon Fire. I’ve already pre-ordered mine. What appeals to me about the prospect of using the new Fire is the fact that I’ll be able to read in color as well as black and white. I’ll be able to enjoy a huge number of e-books at my fingertips directly from Amazon, and enjoy movies and TV shows as well. I’ll be able to read in bed without turning on the light. And, it’s lightweight and small enough that I can balance it in one hand and it won’t add much weight to my travelling gear. I also feel a loyalty to Amazon and a desire to buy directly from Amazon because they make my life convenient and easy.

I also own an iPad and I have the Kindle app on my iPad. Right now, I tend to read on the iPad more than I do on my older Kindle, because the brightness of the iPad display makes it easy to read in bed without having the light on. I also use my iPad primarily to watch TV shows and movies; not for work.

I’m a loyal Amazon customer and an Amazon Prime member. I’m obviously the perfect target customer for Amazon. Will I ditch my iPad? No. Will I switch much of my leisure activity to my Amazon Fire? Possibly.

The Real Battlefield: Easy to Consume Digital Media
But what I love about the Amazon Fire/Apple iPad duo is that they both offer great experiences. And, what makes those experiences great isn’t just the high res displays and the full color; it’s the ease with which I can find and download any media I choose to consume in a few seconds. Both Amazon and Apple excel in understanding and offering immediate gratification. When I have a few minutes to unwind, I want to dive into that alternate reality quickly—to lose myself in someone else’s story, to be uplifted and entertained. Both companies excel in providing a full wrap-around customer experience—easy to sample, quick to download and run locally—one-click purchasing and backed up in the cloud. (Well, in Apple’s case, soon to be backed up in the cloud).

Apple’s iCloud: Misunderstood and Underrated

Apple’s iCloud service won’t formally debut until the Fall of 2011, yet it has attracted many criticisms. We think that Apple’s iCloud actually raises the customer experience bar, yet again. With iCloud, Apple is redefining the experience of mobile offline and online computing by automagically synching and backing up all of your applications, files, and preferences across devices. If you lose your phone or your computer dies, you’ll be able to restore everything to exactly the way it was before. If you take a picture on one device, it will magically appear in your photo library on all your other devices. If you are working on a document or a spreadsheet on your iPad, it will magically appear with your cursor in the same spot on your MacBook. And, if you don’t have connectivity, you can keep on working, using your applications, and enjoying your music, etc. until you’re able to re-synch.

Apple uses its “cloud” service with tight integration into its operating systems to deliver this seamless peripatetic computing experience. Application developers who want their applications to conform to that experience will need to write to a new set of application programming interfaces (APIs). If developers want their applications to behave consistently across other operating system platforms and ecosystems (e.g., Windows, RIM, Android, and so on), they’ll need to do more work in order to provide an equivalent cross-platform seamless experience.

Today, there are a number of applications that work really well across platforms (RIM Blackberry, iPad, Mac, PC, Android, etc.), such as Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader, Evernote for capturing, tagging, and annotating information, and, of course, almost all Web-based apps, like Facebook, Gmail, Google apps, and so on. They all manage to deliver good synchronization across mobile apps and across platforms.

The gauntlet that Apple is throwing down with its seamless online/offline/mobile experience brought to you via iCloud is to provide a single environment that keeps all your applications, data, and preferences synched up. That’s going to be a tough act to follow.

 Why Apple's iCloud Service Will Be Successful
iCloud Service Provides Much-Needed Seamless Synchronization of Digital Media and Applications
By Patricia B. Seybold, CEO & Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, June 30, 2011

 

How Amazon Could Keep Our eBook Business, Even If We Switch to the Apple iPad

By Patty Seybold (and Clients & Colleagues)

 
It’s not often that we’re faced with the dilemma of choosing between two exceptional customer experiences. The advent of Apple’s iPad poses that dilemma for me. I’m almost certain that once I start using Apple’s iPad, I will use my Amazon Kindle less and less. And that means that my impulse buying, not just of digital books, magazines, and newspapers, but also of digital music, movies, TV shows, and games will move to Apple. Why? Because the iPad is seductive. It embodies the incredible Apple “i-”user experience and I’ll be able to enjoy crisp black and white reading, brilliant color reading, and interact with my content, my friends and colleagues, and the world while relaxing in my favorite leather armchair or lying in my hammock.

This troubles me. I am seduced by the iPhone, but I’m still in love with the Amazon customer experience. Amazon has made my life easy since 1994. I entrust most of my purchases to Amazon. They rarely let me down. I’ve had great customer experiences. I act on many of the recommendations they give me because they know what I love.

Seeking Advice When Torn between Two Loves

So, this week, I sent out an SOS to my family, friends, and my smartest customers—Patty’s Pioneers and Patty’s Visionaries—the people who are my role models—the lead users who break new ground in customer experience and business innovation. I asked them for advice: Advice for me and advice for Amazon. Here are a few of the things they recommended for me, for other loyal Amazon customers, and for Jeff Bezos at Amazon to consider:

According to my clients, Amazon should:

1. Make it easy to buy digital goods FOR all platforms FROM all platforms.

2. Sell easily portable content

3. Provide the best digital library and back-up services

4. Continue to offer the Kindle Reader software across all devices

5. Support color and better graphics on its e-Readers

6. Sponsor an Open Source e-reader platform

7. Embrace ePub and other E-Book formats that are publishers’ standards

8. Provide competitive commissions; but compete on price