If there is one e-commerce rumor that never seems to die, it is Amazon buying Netflix. I just do not see it happening, yet shares jumped again on the persistent rumors.
From my July 2009 post:
First, a deal with Netflix has been speculated for many years. The overlaps are obvious. I am sure the smart people at Amazon have investigated Netflix and determined if the addition would be a fit. To be sure, there were some synergies a few years ago. Netflix had a solid customer base and fulfillment. The advent of digital video and applications like Amazon Unbox and iTunes have shown that the digital video is for real. Netflix is nice, but likely not a growth segment. Today, Amazon would have interest in the fulfillment but knows the Netflix customer base is likely to get smaller not bigger. Plus the fulfillment model is great for envelopes not for packages.
In the nearly last 12 months, Netflix has done very well in the market by more than doubling in share price. I still hold the opinion that window of opportunities for synergies is past. Amazon won’t do this deal.
Lots of chatter about iPad as the Kindle killer. The chatter is bunk. Kindle has a specific target audience, a niche. That niche loves the Kindle. Niche is the new critical mass.
Look at some of the advantages Kindle has:
Battery Life. Kindle can last up to 7 days without a charge. Seriously.
Content delivery. Kindle has it included. No extra charges or higher price tag.
Readability. Do you want to read a backlit screen all day?
Opening an App Store that people will care about.
The iPad is a very slick device, but it will not be the only one to change the tablet game. Apple App Store developers will start to run into some of the issues that cross-platform mobile developers are dealing with. Namely screen size and incompatible devices. Apple has been very smart with their device hardware and software release cycles. This will become more difficult as different devices begin to proliferate. The iPad will face way more competition than the iPod. Repeating success is, in fact, harder than initial success. Other players and other platforms (HP, Asus, Dell, Everyone on Microsoft or Android) are ready this time. My take is that the biggest losers will be the publishers. Their pricing models will now be more fully exposed to the buying public. That new knowledge will suppress their margins.
Amazon AWS announced Spot Instances of EC2 a few weeks back. I have been very interested in this concept. Auction pricing should be natural for the cloud computing utility model. They will be selling spare capacity from moment to moment. The cloud is attractive since servers often site idle. Sharing that resource makes sense. “Spots” are an extension of the concept to keep AWS at full utilization. Win for AWS and customers. I look forward to seeing how this play out during 2010!
Another read on Amazon’s private brands. I would love to think that the WSJ got inspiration from my earlier post Amazon’s private brands. Plus I re-learned that Pinzon is the name of the Spanish explorer who discovered the Amazon River. In reality, the new products and accounting for “general merchandise” are getting mainstream attention.
Just got an invite to a webinar co-hosted by Cast Iron Systems and Amazon AWS. I have been intrigued by Cast Iron’s integration offering for the enterprise for sometime. Their initial concept of an integration appliance has played well in the market and they now offer full cloud based services as well. Most enterprises are finding the real challenge of “going cloud” to be the integration points inside their firewall. The Cast Iron appliance does a real nice job of bridging that gap. Their Salesforce.com solution is rock solid. The next logical step is to bridge that gap to Salesforce.com partner and leading utility cloud player Amazon AWS. The webinar should be interesting and worth checking out.
Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation blog is a must read for marketing, branding and social media. Check his What’s In Your Bag? post for some an interesting take on Amazon Widgets.
I took a turn creating my own widget about some of the coffee related products I have blogged about and a few that are essential. This is a very cool way to talk about the things you love and generate word of mouth.
Disclosure: The wife is employed by Amazon, but she does not read my blog or drink coffee.
Amazon is introducing a new AWS service to extend to a virtual private cloud (VPC). Basically it offers the enterprise to extended an existing network via VPN to a logically isolated set of EC2 instances.
From my experience selling cloud-based services, this will play well with the enterprise. Security is critical for enterprises today, tomorrow and in the future. Cloud providers constantly have to get over the security hurdle — even AWS. VPC should be appealing to the enterprise since similar services are already established. Governments will also be interested.
This is interesting and borderline funny. Amazon has created its own URL shortener for products. See TechFlash Amazon creates its own URL shortener for products. Basically the idea is to make it easier to post product links to Twitter and other social media. It has some simple rules and looks to be pretty useful. However one of the more popular Amazon Twitter accounts, Amazondeals with over 15,000 followers is still using TinyURL.com. Seems like an opportunity for improvement for the Amazon GoldBox team.
Disclosure: The wife is employed by Amazon, but she does not read my blog.