How Are the Nook and the Kindle Beating the iPad? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Maybe "beating" is too strong a word. The iPad continues its dominance, and for most buyers -- and app developers -- it's still the only tablet game in town.

But compared to every other tablet out there, even the HP TouchPad and its legendary $99 clearance sale, the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Amazon Kindle Fire are cleaning house. And according to Morgan Keegan analyst Tavis McCourt, "maybe 1-2 million" iPad sales were stolen by the Kindle, based on his estimates for last quarter's sales and Amazon.com's data.

Now, Amazon won't say how many Kindle Fires specifically that it's sold. And it's probably unreasonable to think that every one of the people who bought one would've bought an iPad instead, and didn't. But at the same time, out of all the tablets out there only two are having anything resembling success, in a market that's owned by the iPad.

How did they do it?

It's not just the price tag

If it were, there'd be a lot more tablet sales in general. Because this whole time there have been $100 to $200 "tablets" at places like K-Mart, with resistive touch screens and styli. Meanwhile, the prices of other tablets keep dropping further and further. The BlackBerry PlayBook has gone down to $199 and $299 in two separate sales, and RIM continues to try to unload its $485 million worth of unsold PlayBooks.

Even if these price tags do help, don't count on other tablet manufacturers to be able to repeat Barnes & Noble and Amazon's success this way. Not only did Amazon cut corners to get the Kindle out the door, it's apparently selling its tablet at a loss, and making its money off of people using them to buy stuff from it.

So what do the three companies have in common?

They're all retailers

Barnes & Noble puts its Nook kiosks right at the front of its brick-and-mortar retail stores, and has people on hand to demonstrate them. The Kindle Fire has been on Amazon.com's front page for months now. And the Apple Store has been one of the major factors in Apple's 21st century revival.

All three companies know how to present and sell their tablets, and all three own storefronts (whether virtual or physical) from which they can promote them heavily without worrying about competition. All three have made their tablets into brand name devices, and all three have given them distinct looks and advantages.

"Android tablet" makers, in contrast, are building largely identical devices that compete only on price and specs, and tossing their wares into the retail channel as though throwing darts while blindfolded. The results have been predictably bad ... which makes the iPad, the Kindle, and the Nook look spectacular by comparison.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/applecomputer/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120112/tc_ac/10819713_how_are_the_nook_and_the_kindle_beating_the_ipad

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