The brand spanking new Kindle Fire HD has been hitting the headlines ever since it was announced and techies have been trying to get their hands on the product to see what all the fuss is about.
One such report came from ubergizmo who tested out the tablet and reported back that the Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD does not feature Google as their default search anymore and have replaced it with Microsoft’s Bing search service. This is a good sign for Microsoft who has been trying to compete with Google in the Search Engine market for quite some time.
Amazon’s Kindle tablet has been quietly building up a following that many other companies have been unable to do because of Apple’s dominance within the tablet sector. However, both Google and Amazon have figured out ways to make inroads into the sector as they focused on smaller, lower priced devices. Google’s Android powered Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD are great examples of creating a product for an under section of the market where Apple has not gone yet. As the tablet market expands, Amazon and Google should expect their sales to also increase and challenge Apple.
Reports indicate that Amazon was able to sell 4 to 6 million Kindle Fires last year, which is not much when compared to Apple’s iPad sales but should give Microsoft’s search engine a boost. Amazon expects to grow on their Kindle success by pushing sales of the kindle and in turn promoting Bing. The piggy back ride that Bing will get from Kindle Fire HD success should help the company compete against Google who has dominated search for quite some time now. Of course, if users truly like Google then the default settings might not matter and owners of the Kindle Fire HD may just change the settings and use Google.
The motivating factor for Amazon to switch to Bing may have several layers. Amazon and Google have started to compete directly against each other and this may be another strike from Amazon to grab search revenue. The second reason might be that Microsoft is subsidizing the tablet manufacturing cost by some sort of revenue sharing agreement.
Source: Business Insider
Photo: Uncrate
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