Amazon announced their widely anticipated kindle lineup this week. While there has been a lot of discussion regarding the new Kindle Fire, Amazon's $200 low cost custom-android competitor to the iPad, there hasn't been much talk about the lineup they are fielding, and what it means for the Kindle brand.
First, it's worth mentioning that Amazon has, over the last few years, developed a very strong brand with their Kindle e-reader. People know what a Kindle is. They probably know someone who owns a Kindle. They understand the brand, and it is seen in a positive light in the context of reading books.
Amazon is seeking to bring this Kindle brand into the more multi-purpose tablet market, while simultaneously continuing to refine and sell the existing e-reader business. This is not a bad approach. In fact, some people speculated before the announcement that Amazon's tablet would be simply called the "Kindle Touch." I am using the term "tablet" here in the sense of distinguishing the product from a device intended primarily as an e-reader.
However, Amazon surprised a lot of people by not only releasing a low-cost general purpose tablet, but updating their existing line of Kindle products, and continuing to make available the "old" product line. Amazon's calling their new 7" tablet the Kindle Fire, while the other products are called Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G, Kindle with Keyboard, Kindle with Keyboard 3G, and Kindle DX.
This raises the question of whether Amazon's Kindle product matrix is simply too large, and too confusing. Are there too many Kindles?
If you look at Amazon's homepage, you get this image:
This is reasonable, and makes it look like there are three product lines:
The 3G option for the Kindle Touch makes it a little bit confusing, but it's not crazy.
The problem is when you actually click on the image, it drives you to their store page, which proceeds to show you this:
Now it looks like there's six products - or four categories if you don't count 3G separately , which cover an entire gamut of the price range - from the Kindle at $79 to the Kindle Fire at $199.
$99 - Kindle with Keyboard
$149 - Kindle with Keyboard 3G
But these prices aren't so simple. Some of these prices shown for these products are the dollar figures based on the consumer choosing "Kindle with Special Offers" - in other words, an ad-supported price. Choose the version without ads, and the price jumps up.
The Kindle Fire, on the other hand, doesn't show any ads. So you have the Kindle Touch 3G at $189, versus the Kindle Fire at $199. Whats the difference? Well, there's the name, and obviously a color screen - that's shown in the little thumbnails. But you have to scroll down to actually see what's going on. And here is where things get really ugly.
The first thing you see is that there's actually five categories - not the four shown above. The Kindle DX is also available, though why it's not given top billing is confusing and unclear. And it's more expensive than the Kindle Fire?
Imagine your mother, or grandmother goes online, and wants to buy this "Kindle" thing she's heard about:
It's like an iPad, except cheaper! And you can read books on it! (I think it does apps, too?)
That's going to be the extent of most people's information on the Kindle. So she clicks on the graphic in the middle of the page on Amazon.com, and is confronted with all these options. What's the difference? Which ones do apps? Which ones play video? Which have a touchscreen? Which let you write emails?
They're all called Kindle. And the Kindle brand, as I mentioned at the beginning, is a strong brand. It's a good name. People know about it. With the popularity of the iPad, and Amazon's publicity regarding their new announcement, people will be interested. But what should they buy? Do they want an e-reader? Do they want to play movies? Do they want to run Apps?
You have to keep scrolling down, and then you see this confusing mess. Things were ugly before, but it actually gets worse.
I've cut down the images to save space, and only show the most relevant parts, but there's at least a full page and change of just product matrix - and on some monitors it's probably two pages of information.
What's the difference? And why does it matter?
You can't differentiate by price.
The feature set doesn't just get better - it gets different. An e-reader doesn't necessarily compete with a tablet. This is the major problem. The feature sets are distinct - and don't completely overlap. There's all these different models. But they're all called "Kindle." And you have to choose between, well, all of them.
Which have e-ink? Amazon's been running advertisements about how great e-ink is, for reading at the beach, on a plane, everywhere. Which have good battery life? What's the screen size difference? Which have a keyboard? Touch screens? Multitouch? Which run apps?
The Kindle Touch has some of this stuff, the Fire has other stuff, but there's not a clear progression of features with price. It's confusing, and that's not good.
Fundamentally the problem is that the name "Kindle Touch 3G" compared to "Kindle Fire" tells you nothing about what each product does. You can't tell from the price, and you can't tell from the name.
You have to look at this giant product matrix and actually read the feature list to figure things out. That isn't good design, or a good business model.
Dell gets away with this (if you can call it their business to be successful right now) because you are buying a product from them, and customizing it at the time of purchase. It's like options on a car. In some ways, Dell has a simple product matrix - they sell a couple laptops, a couple desktops, and consumers customize them. Dell has, of course, drifted away from this simplicity, but they've probably done so to their detriment.
A confusing product matrix just isn't a good strategy. Apple learned this the hard way, in the mid 90s. Performa, Quadra, Centris. PowerMac 6XXX, 7XXX, 8XXX, 9XXX. AV models. WGS models. It was all over the place.
When Jobs came back, one of the first things he did was start slashing the product line, until they had a very simple product matrix - four boxes. A Pro Desktop, Pro Laptop, Consumer Desktop, Consumer Laptop.
Here's a confusing, but relevant photo from Wikipedia:
The vertical line occurs around the time when Steve Jobs took over the CEO position at Apple, and started discontinuing models left and right. Before the vertical line, you have all these colored products, and then suddenly you don't. Simplicity wins, because it's easier for consumers to understand.
Apple let you customize these computers, and in some cases choose the color, but it was obvious what each part of the product matrix represented. If you were a home user, you'd get an iMac or an iBook. Need a professional or business machine? PowerMac or PowerBook. Apple's product matrix doesn't look so different today, more than 10 years later.
In the same way, Apple lets you customize the iPad. They really only sell one thing: the iPad2. That's it.
They sell other things, like iPhones, iPods, but these don't have the same name. They're obviously different.
When you go to Apple's site, and you click "buy now" on the iPad button, it asks you whether you want a black or white model.
Then, Apple has you choose between six options, which reflect different combinations of size and 3G wireless capability. This isn't complicated, though, and, crucially, the price is an easy indicator of what is better. You don't lose anything with the more expensive model. There's no tricks. There's only two questions, "Do you want 3G?" and "How many gigs?"
These are questions consumers understand. People know about gigs. They may be fuzzy on gigabyte versus gigabit versus gibibyte, but GB is one of those computer things people "get" - you have more, you can store more stuff. It's been drilled into people's minds. And Wifi versus 3G is also a pretty easy choice. Apple lays it all out for you.
Finally, if you do choose a model with 3G, Apple asks if you want AT&T or Verizon for your carrier. Another easy question:
This isn't a big product matrix. It isn't a confusing grid. It's easy.
There's one product. It's called the iPad2. And you can customize it with the options you want.
