Category: Amazon
Is Jeff Bezos a Bad Boss?
I am a big fan of Jeff Bezos, the founder of amazon.com and i never hided that i would like to spend 1 day with him anywhere in the world to get to know him better and maybe take some of his DNA and apply into my ideas.
He surely revolutionized the e-commerce scene in the USA and all over the world, even the biggest brick-and-mortar retailers could not compete with him including the world’s biggest retailer Walmart and i was admiring more and more everyday with every new product he was launching under the amazon brand.
Yesterday I finished reading Brad Stone’s book “The Everything Store“, the latest book in covering Amazon’s amazing journey but while reading it, i started thinking differently about Jeff Bezos, is he a bad boss???
Maybe this is the reason of his success, being harsh to people to make things move forward and his style of managing people and each one of us has his different style in doing so.
A paragraph taken from the book:
Bezos fits comfortably into this mold. His drive and boldness trumps other leadership ideals, such as consensus building and promoting civility. While he can be charming and capable of great humor in public, in private he explodes into what some of his underlings call nutters. A colleague failing to meet Bezos’s exacting standards will set off a nutter. If an employee does not have the right answers or tries to bluff, or takes credit for someone else’s work, or exhibits a whiff of internal politics, uncertainty, or frailty in the heat of battle—a blood vessel in Bezos’s forehead bulges and his filter falls away. He’s capable of hyperbole and harshness in these moments and over the years has delivered some devastating rebukes. Among his greatest hits, collected and relayed by Amazon veterans:
“Do I need to go down and get the certificate that says I’m CEO of the company to get you to stop challenging me on this?”
Amazon New Kindles
Source: Amazon.com
Dear Customers,
Today we’re excited to introduce the all-new Kindle Fire HD.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G isn’t just the best tablet for the price, it’s the best tablet. $499 now gets you a large-screen HD tablet with a stunning 8.9″ display, exclusive Dolby audio, dual stereo speakers, the fastest Wi-Fi, ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless, plus our new unprecedented $49.99 one-year 4G data package. Customers save hundreds of dollars in the first year compared to other 4G tablets. Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ is also available in a Wi-Fi only model for $299.
Kindle Fire HD is the world’s most-advanced 7″ tablet, with a stunning HD display, plus the same exclusive Dolby audio, dual stereo speakers, the fastest Wi-Fi, and 16 GB of storage. Kindle Fire HD is just $199.
We are also introducing the world’s most advanced e-readers, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Paperwhite 3G.
You’ll do a double take when you see Kindle Paperwhite—we’ve added 62% more pixels and increased contrast by 25%, so whites are whiter, and blacks are blacker. We’ve also added a revolutionary built-in front light for the perfect reading experience whether you’re out at the beach or at home in bed. Kindle Paperwhite starts from just $119. Kindle Paperwhite 3G is available for $179 with free 3G wireless—never pay for or hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. We’ve also updated our smallest, lightest Kindle with improved fonts and 15% faster page turns—it now starts at just $69.
Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite are each in a class by themselves when it comes to hardware—there’s nothing better. But the real magic is that they are also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree these are the best tablets and e-readers anywhere, at any price.
Thank you for being a customer,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Nexus On Fire
The tablets war is still going on. Tomorrow Google will start delivering its Nexus 7 Tablet for $199, a price that will put the Kindle Fire on more fire. With a front camera and full access to Google Play store with more than 600,000 applications and the restrictions Amazon is having on its Kindle for accessing the Play store, consumers will most probably switch to the Nexus and put the Kindle aside.
In my opinion, the fastest Amazon.com allows its users to access the Play store and install Google apps on their Kindle Fire, the better the shock of the market will be absorbed.
Amazon.com, The Offline Retailer
Rumors are already everywhere online, Amazon.com is going to have a brick and mortar store in Seattle, where their headquarter is located.
Why would the world’s largest online retailer, go for a physical store?
Maybe their revenues are having problems and it looks obvious when selling products under cost and the many acquisitions made in 2011 and they already deviated from the core business when they started offering cloud services.
No wonder Jeff Bezos is a clever business man having his own reasons to go in this direction and managed to convince his board to open a physical store, where the main products will be the Kindle line of e-readers and tablets and their respective accessories, also high-margin products will be on the shelves.
Surely the Apple store model inspired Amazon, the Apple stores are a unique boutique & shopping experience, they bring lots of awareness to the brand, even if you don’t to buy an Apple product when you enter one, you will stroll inside the store, enjoying the simplicity of the decoration, and the products as well.
Amazon already has an extensive line of accessories under their brand name and definitely the brand will be stretching more if the store model is a success.
Some others would consider the store concept a way to deviate from the tax issue Amazon is having with other states.
We will be able to judge more once the store is up ad running, and in all cases, good luck Jeff!
Discovering The Kindle Fire Outside The USA
I am a big fan of Jeff Bezos since day 1, because of his entrepreneurial and fun spirit. Back in September 2011, Amazon announced it is entering the tablet business unveiling the Kindle Fire for US$199-.
Everybody was wondering what they will get for that cheap price, but Bezos was on the right track, again. Goldman Sachs released an analysis mid-December 2011, stating that it expects Amazon to sell 6 million Kindle Fires by the end of 2011.
Unfortunately the Kindle Fire and the Amazon android market were dedicated only to US customers, and Amazon clearly announced that the Kindle Fire will not have access to Google’s Android Market. Knowing that fact, I was so excited to put my hands on a Kindle Fire, considering it, in worst case scenario a simple ebook reader. So I had to wait till Christmas to open my valuable gift.
After few days, I started discovering many ways to enjoy the Kindle Fire if you live outside the US and I will be sharing them in this blog post.
1- If you cannot ship the Kindle Fire to a US address or have any friend coming overseas, you can use to buy and ship it using Aramex Shop&Ship service.
2- You can easily root your brand new Kindle Fire and lose its warranty, there are many online guide to do it, one of them is here, you can also watch this video.
3- You can access the Amazon Market by having a US address and credit card, you can buy these services from www.usunlocked.com. You have to wait 2-4 business days to have your US virtual credit card issued (I got mine in 2 days). Once you card is ready, go to Amazon website and create a new account from scratch using the US address and add your new card as payment and 1-Click options.
4- Download tons of apps by simply pointing your Kindle Fire browser to GetJar.com, you will be asked to download the GetJar app, once on your tablet, you will have access to almost everything on the site. I have tried lots of other alternatives, but GetJar beats them all.
5- You can also have any Android Market apps on your Kindle Fire without rooting it, but you would need an Android based phone with Astro File Manager installed on it. Browse the market from your phone and install any application you like. Then go to Astro and back your apps, this action will create a folder with .apk files for the apps you selected. Copy/Paste those .apk files into your Kindle Fire then install them directly from the tablet using Easy Installer.
It worked so perfectly for me using points 3, 4 & 5, I even had my 1st 2012 ebook for free.
My 3 negative points to Jeff Bezos and the Kindle Fire team:
1) The Kindle Fire should have a front branding, so the user can know the direction, even that most of the apps and books rotate with you. I already wrote about this here.
2) The power bottom should be moved to the top, I accidentally switched it off many times when posing it on a surface or my knees while reading in bed.
3) Yesterday my Kindle Fire went dead, not turning on for like 1 hour, then after searching the web for a solution, it turned out that this is happening to lots of other people, I am sure Amazon is working on an update to solve this problem. I had to hold the power switch for more than 30 seconds to bring back the Kindle Fire to life.
Jeff Bezos You Rock!
Where Is The Kindle Fire Branding?
Yesterday, Amazon.com launched its new full line of Kindle products including the long-waited tablet, called Kindle Fire.
No doubt that Amazon will reshape the tablet scene, but in my opinion, the Kindle Fire won’t be of any threat to the iPad market share (many bloggers made sure yesterday to name their Kindle Fire blog entry as “the iPad Killer” just to gain traffic to their sites).
This blog post is about a simple question I asked myself after going through the Amazon site and checking the new Kindle products, why the Kindle Fire has no branding on its front?
When you take look at the Kindle Fire dedicated page, you will notice that none of the product photos are showing any Amazon.com or Kindle Fire logos or branding.
Will Amazon.com ship the Kindle Fire unbranded?
DM Private Label on Amazon.de
German discount drugstore DM (Drogerie Markt) started selling its private label products under the different DM-brands online on Amazon.de, the latter will take care of the sales and distribution.
The cooperation is expected to be mutually beneficial. For DM it will be interesting to test consumer interest for its personal care products on the internet without having to invest in online logistics itself.
In case it would appear that online sales of relatively low-priced private labels will be a profitable business model, DM could decide to open its own web store.
Could Amazon Be Android’s Best Hope?
If Amazon does, in fact, enter the tablet market with a low cost Android tablet this fall they might be able to change the playing field to a lower margin one where Apple would be less able to compete. Could a low cost Amazon Android tablet present one of the first serious contenders to the iPad? Based on the latest Retrevo Pulse Report, it appears that consumers are ready to buy a low cost tablet and are very keen on one from Amazon.
Read Full Article on Retrevo Blog
Amazon.co.uk – Christmas 2010
Employees of Amazon.co.uk preparing orders for the 2010 festive season in Wales (Matt Cardy / Getty Images)