Product

Learning from Amazon’s Kindle Fire Release Strategy

December 20, 2011

In short series of posts on the OpenView Blog site, Research Analyst Brandon Hickie takes an in-depth look at Amazon’s Kindle Fire marketing strategy, and looks at some lessons young companies can takeaway from the product’s launch.

In a November post (before the Kindle Fire was officially released), Brandon wrote that the intriguing thing about Amazon’s marketing strategy was that it was “not actually aiming to profit from tablet device sales (at least early-on); rather, it is using the Kindle Fire as a means to develop a new sales channel for its e-commerce business and platform to facilitate the growth and dominance of its content and cloud computing services.”

He noted that Amazon was betting that by pre-loading their content service apps and optimizing the Fire for the company’s e-commerce and multimedia services will increase its market share and offset the cost of subsidizing sales of the new Kindle.

In a more recent post, Brandon reflects on the product’s launch; a release that was initially considered a success but has since been tarnished by concerns over the Kindle Fire’s design and functionality. He writes that while all eyes are on how Amazon intends to resolve some of these criticisms, the takeaway for startups (as always), is to test, test, test.

“Unless a market entrance strategy is entirely dependent upon the time that it reaches the market, then it is worthwhile to dedicate the time necessary for the product to go through a full quality assurance and testing process,” he explains.

For the full post and more lessons startups can learn from Amazon’s Kindle Fire release strategy, visit the OpenView Blog site.

Photo by: Nic Taylor

Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy

<strong>Brandon Hickie</strong> is Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>. He previously worked at OpenView as Marketing Insights Manager. Prior to OpenView Brandon was an Associate in the competition practice at Charles River Associates where he focused on merger strategy, merger regulatory review, and antitrust litigation.