Now that the fanfare is dying down over the announcement for the new Kindle Fire range, a few nuggets of information are starting to slip out that do not get trumpeted at the press conference.
Firstly, the Kindle Fire will carry adverts — nothing new in this as the current Kindle range offer a similar experience in the lock screen. To be honest the ads are usually non-intrusive, simply prompting new books. While I doubt the Kindle Fire will stick to book adverts, I hope they continue to be non-intrusive. Most people are not aware that you can actually opt out of the adverts, for a small fee ($15) however it appeared that the Fire range was not included in this. Amazon have done a quick u-turn on the policy and confirmed that the opt-out fee will be available for the Fire range too.
Secondly, it would appear the Fire will have its default search engine set to Microsoft’s Bing search experience. One can only assume some money changed hands for this arrangement. You are of course free to change to another search engine. Ironic perhaps, given Fire runs on the open source Google Android system.
Both of these decisions help us to understand how Amazon have been able to price the new devices so low.
-
Gbiz IT