So says Forbes, in a lengthy piece that can be difficult to read for all the boisterous pomposity -- as if there were any other kind! Still, good stuff in there.

More than any other corporation of the Internet age, Amazon embodies the emerging culture of business strategy. It is the General Electric of our times, and Bezos is the Jack Welch. When the definitive book on corporate strategy for the early Internet era is written, Amazon will be the main example, not Google, Apple, Microsoft or Facebook. Those are great companies too, but their greatness lies in other departments. As far as corporate strategy goes, they are mediocre players, not grandmasters.

What? I told you it was filled with boisterous pomposity. Don't blame me.

Yes, you heard it first from me: Amazon will offer its own smartphone, using its own version of Android, sometime in 2012. Probably first half of the year.

I've already spelled out the reasons for this but here's a great data point to further support my argument:

Mobile Continues Strong 9-Month Growth: In the last nine months, the share of U.S. online retail dollars attributable to mobile devices has doubled from 1.87 percent in April of 2011 to 3.74 percent in December 2011. RichRelevance also tracked a spectacular increase in mobile traffic as share of commerce page views with more than 15 percent of shopping sessions occurring on mobile devices. In April of 2011, just under 9 percent of all shoppers were browsing digital aisles via a mobile device. By December of 2011, the share has more than doubled, reaching 18 percent of all consumers.

iPad and iPhone Dominate Mobile Shopping: Apple mobile devices account for the bulk of all online non-desktop sales: just over 92% of the sales originated from an iPad or an iOS-enabled device in December 2011, up from 88 percent in April. Apple mobile devices also have a larger average order value (AOV) compared to other mobile platforms ($123 for Apple vs. $101 for Android in December 2011) – and far outstrip desktop orders ($87)

Mobile purchases -- and searches for items via mobile -- are growing fast. And nearly every purchase made by a smartphone is made by an iPhone -- or other Apple product.

Amazon is the world's store. To continue, they must be everywhere, meaning they must be with you all the time, even when you are in another (physical) store. 

There's simply no way they cede this to iPhone. And they damn sure aren't going to wait around till Google Android is competitive with iOS. 

Those of us who read Digitimes will read their latest nugget of juicy gossip, that Apple will offer a 7.85 inch 'iPad Lite' in late 2012, following release of an iPad 3, and conclude that, once again, Digitimes may be right, is probably wrong, but damn if those Taiwanese don't know how to score pageviews and linkbacks to their humble site.

What they say:

Apple is likely to launch a 7.85-inch iPad prior to the fourth quarter of 2012 in addition to a new iPad scheduled to be released at the end of the first quarter, according to sources in the supply chain.

Global shipments of tablet PCs are expected to reach 60 million units in 2011, of which 70% will be Apple's iPads. To cash in on market demand as well as market expectations, Apple is expected to release its next-generation iPads at the end first-quarter 2012, said the sources.

However, in order to cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors, Apple has been persuaded into the development of 7.85-inch iPads, the sources indicated.

In addition to purchasing 7.85-inch panels from LG Display, Apple will also buy panels from AU Optronics (AUO), indicated the sources, adding that makers in the supply chain are likely to begin production of the 7.85-inch models at the end of the second quarter of 2012.

Don't spend too much time focusing on that whole "indicated the sources" line. The odds that I'm the source are just as high as their source being some Apple exec talking shit to some high-priced whore sent to his door in his posh Shenzhen hotel suite.

Though I"m not the source.

Here's all you need to know re this, since I wrote about this issue earlier this week:

For the capable, if limited -- and crappy -- first iteration of Kindle Fire to sell 6 million units in its first quarter, then 15-20 million units in 2012, I believe it must be priced at an almost-disposable level; where consumers know that they have no right to bitch or complain or demand more.

That price, as HP's TouchPad fire sale has revealed, is $99.

Until Kindle Fire is $99, which won't happen til 2013 at the earliest, I think Goldman's numbers are off by about 2X. I'm sticking with my prediction of (just under) 3 million units for this quarter.

That said, if I'm wrong, or more to the point, if Goldman is right, or even close to right, then that absolutely will get Apple's attention. iPad 2 and Kindle Fire are different devices, with different strengths, different markets, different use cases. But, as we all know, there is a great deal of overlap.

Thus, if you're an Apple fanboy, take heart. If Kindle Fire sells as well as Goldman states, then Apple absolutely will jump into the 7 inch, limited function mini-tablet space. Fast. They will not cede a large market for tablets. Period.

Apple has every intention of dominating the "tablet" market for years. Amazon's Kindle Fire, at $199, is well priced but extremely limited. For Apple to offer another tablet form factor, with all the pains this would cause it's supply chain, its product display, not to mention its impact on the half million existing apps, many of which are optimized for the current iPad screen, they have to believe that they cannot get the iPad 3 price down to an acceptable level, where "acceptable" means at least a 30% + profit margin and that there is an extremely large market that, at least for the next several years, have no desire to spend more than about $300 on a tablet since they have no desire to use a tablet for anything other than eReading, web surfing and occasional video watching.

Better for Apple to go down market in this case, then to stand pat and allow Amazon, with its solid ecosystem, brand name, distribution and legit hardware abilities to go up-market.

All this speculation, as much as it highlights the battle between Amazon and Apple, should not move us from the larger picture: the rapid rise of the tablet, in all its forms, is remaking the web, fundmanetally altering our relationship with our televisions, and destroying several existing markets, including for PCs, publishing, advertising and retail. 

As these industries are brought down, new opportunities will arise.

Amazon appears to be succeeding where many others are trying to succeed: using Android for their own mobile sales and services strategy, free from the clutches of Google.

This is no surprise. Amazon wants the emphasis on its app store, its digital media ecosystem, its payments platform, its recommendation services, its cloud infrastructure, its brands. Hell, even the Amazon designed browser for the Android-based Kindle Fire seeks to keep Google out. 

A Kindle Fire user is, in Amazon's view, an Amazon customer. Not a Google customer.

Only, I did not know this: per Xconomy, Amazon is, apparently, not even allowing others to use Google for their Kindle Fire apps. This could get interesting:

As a much more stripped-down device, primarily intended for media consumption and shopping, the Kindle Fire doesn’t have GPS capabilities. And even though the Kindle Fire is based on a version of Google’s Android mobile operating system, Amazon has aggressively asserted its independence from Google with the Kindle Fire.

That has meant keeping Google Maps out of Amazon’s Android app store, and telling Kindle Fire developers not to include any features based on Google’s Mobile Services—even though that meant the mega-retailer didn’t have its own in-app purchasing system when the device was rolled out.

So, to make its maps work on the Kindle Fire’s version of Android, Zillow’s app offers a mobile version of its regular online maps—which are already supplied in almost all cases by Bing. GPS-enabled services are turned off on the Kindle Fire app, but users can still search for an address or location to find homes they’re interested in scoping out.

That’s why you saw Zillow making a big deal out of the fact that it was “the only map-based real estate app on the platform” when it announced the app as one of the first to be available for the Kindle Fire.

Good stuff.

[Bless me, father, for I have sinned. The title of this post is obviously linkbait. God is displeased, my son. You must actually read the articles in Huffington Post for the next 36 hours for penitence.]

I've long written of the war between Amazon and Apple.  Apple makes far better, more profitable, more capable devices. They also do digital media sales slightly better. Amazon has a far better cloud infrastructure and pricing platform. Apple has its own physical retail footprint while Amazon dominates online retail. Each has an excellent billing and back-end infrastructure. Both can live out their days quite well in peace.

Except such businesses are never content with their current lot. There will be no peace, only war.

Thus, the current tablet skirmish. The beloved iPad 2 vs the crappy Kindle Fire. iBooks vs Kindle books. Amazon Prime streaming and free cloud locker vs iCloud + AirPlay. iTunes vs Amazon Music. The App Store vs the, er, app store. And so it goes...despite differing strategies, which sees Apple making almost no money on content but billions on hardware and Amazon prepared to take a loss on every sale of each of its hardware devices in exchange for increased content sales and extending its shopping presence to each of us, wherever we are.

Despite BigBlog hype and breathless media anticipation, the low-priced, $200 Kindle Fire is now, in the eye of the Christmas shopping hurricane, receiving negative review after scathing negative review. Though its a mere $200, about the same as last year's Kindle 2 eReader, and offers web browsing, eReading, apps, movies and more, plus a host of goodies for Amazon Prime members, some tech bloggers are now writing off the Kindle Fire.

As I wrote just yesterday, this is a mistake. Amazon's ecosystem is solid, well-priced, extensive. Its ecosystem can challenge anyone's, including Apple's iTunes. Even if it should lose, Amazon's ecosystem will put up a great fight. Likewise, the Kindle Fire, at (technically) $199 is priced perfectly to sell tens of millions.

The problem is that, as with the first iteration of the original Kindle, the device itself sucks. But Amazon has too much at stake here and too much to offer to even contemplate abandoning the device-as-platform. They will get this right. Kindle Fire 2, or whatever they choose to name it, will be good, not crappy. Kindle Fire 3, out sometime in the next 18 months, will be awesome.

But the question we have today is: how many Kindle Fires will Amazon sell this quarter?

Last month, I predicted 2.87 million.

Today, Goldman predicts 6 million.

This rapid early adoption of Amazon’s first tablet device does not surprise us. While the Kindle Fire certainly doesn’t have the breadth of functionality of the iPad (no camera or microphone, shorter battery life and less memory), it does a few things very well, which just happen to be the few actions that users utilize the tablet form factor most often for, in our view. The interface, which is designed around activities (i.e., watching video, listening to music, reading) as opposed to applications, is very easy to use. This essentially allows the device to do a great job of facilitating quick consumption of media; whether it’s stored in the cloud or on the device or needs to be purchased from the Amazon store, the user just needs a few clicks within the particularly activity to get the desired content up and running. Once it is, we view the experience of streaming video and music and reading books to be as good as any.

For the long term, Goldman sees Amazon selling between 15.5 million and 20.5 million Kindle Fires during the first full year of availability.

6 million Kindle Fires, these crappy Kindle Fires, is huge. 15-20 million Kindle Fires in (full) year 1 is amazing. If correct, that would reveal a heretofor unknown yet certainly pent-up demand for tablets that I guess neither Amazon nor Apple ever imagined. 

Except, I still think the number is too high. For the capable, if limited -- and crappy -- first iteration of Kindle Fire to sell 6 million units in its first quarter, then 15-20 million units in 2012, I believe it must be priced at an almost-disposable level; where consumers know that they have no right to bitch or complain or demand more.

That price, as HP's TouchPad fire sale has revealed, is $99.

Until Kindle Fire is $99, which won't happen til 2013 at the earliest, I think Goldman's numbers are off by about 2X. I'm sticking with my prediction of (just under) 3 million units for this quarter.

That said, if I'm wrong, or more to the point, if Goldman is right, or even close to right, then that absolutely will get Apple's attention. iPad 2 and Kindle Fire are different devices, with different strengths, different markets, different use cases. But, as we all know, there is a great deal of overlap.

Thus, if you're an Apple fanboy, take heart. If Kindle Fire sells as well as Goldman states, then Apple absolutely will jump into the 7 inch, limited function mini-tablet space. Fast. They will not cede a large market for tablets. Period.

[Update: Kindle Fire rebuke is clearly in the ether. It appears that moments before I wrote this, Harry McCracken posted something similar, and moments after I wrote this, TechCrunch did likewise.]

Love that title. It's from a review in the Detroit Free Press, one of an increasing chorus of scathing reviews for the Kindle Fire:

Early buyers of Amazon's tablet-like e-reader, the Kindle Fire, are beginning to find what many had feared: it's not really a tablet computer at all.

These early adopters are running into an experience that is often clunky, a touchscreen that isn't super responsive, a Web browser that struggles on many websites and head-scratching hardware omissions. (There are no volume buttons.)

For Amazon, it's the product of impossibly high hopes for the device. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Fire earlier this fall, the expectation was that it would be able to fully compete with the Apple iPad 2.

The Fire was supposed to finally buoy an Android tablet ecosystem that has languished under expensive, clunky hardware from manufacturers like Motorola.

It has not done that.

The $199 device also lacks privacy controls. It displays a carousel of all the most-recently touched content, even if you don't necessarily want that romance novel brought to the front with each read.

And while many had hoped to gift the inexpensive tablet to a teenager, doing so would also allow younger users to have one-click access to be able to make any purchases on the device.

This and every one of the negative reviews on the Kindle Fire are spot on. Worse, Amazon has *earned* this backlash. They hyped the Fire, big time, while fostering the very real sense that it was a iPad 2 competitor.

It is not.

That said, it's time once again for a reality check.

The fools and haters that claim Apple is all about the marketing simply have no idea what they are talking about. None. No one -- no other company in the world -- can build consumer electronics/computing devices of the design, build quality and cost that Apple can. Not even Amazon. Suggesting that iPad sales are great because of some Steve Jobs reality distortion field only reveals that reviewer's ignorance -- or deception.

Secondly, people need to not be so dumb. The Fire is a $200 device designed, primarily, as a platform for Amazon's eBooks, Amazon's music streaming, Amazon's video streaming, and very little else. But that's why it's only $200! Even with that, Amazon loses a few dollars per unit sold. Spend $200 on an Amazon ecosystem receiving unit and then complain it's not as good as an iPad and you got no one to blame but yourself.

Lastly, fear not. Amazon will get this right. No, this truthism does nothing to alleviate the suffering of existing Kindle Fire owners. Still, you should make no mistake. The Kindle Fire, as a product line, is not going away. Apple and Amazon may have very different strategies regarding where they make their money, but both companies do have one thing in common:

they make sure the ecosystem is rock-solid and then build supporting hardware for the ecosystem

Today's $200 Kindle Fire sucks. Next year's $200 Kindle Fire will be pretty damn good. 2013's $150 Kindle Fire will kick ass. 

I've told you already that the Kindle Fire is, at its best...meh.

But it's only $199! 

As I've also told you, Amazon has the second best ecosystem for tablets. For $199, you get an e-Reader, web browser, video player. Yes, we can complain it's kinda sucky, the netbook of tablets, but it's only $199.

Along with that low price, which means Amazon loses a few bucks on each one, Amazon offers other cherries, particularly for Amazon Prime members. Lots of free movie streams, for example.

Still, I wouldn't buy it. Though I expect millions will. Which is why I think Apple has been planting rumors of an iPad 3 come February. It's there way of telling us all to not get nor give a Kindle Fire for Christmas. Hold off just a couple months and we'll have something much much better.

I don't think it will help. 

For millions of *potential* iPad buyers, the Kindle Fire, at less than half the price, is fine. For many millions of buyers, in fact. Which is why I wrote last month that I expect the Kindle Fire to be America's #1 selling tablet -- yes, above iPad -- by summer 2012. 

Apple needs to continue to make the iPad even more powerful and continue to remind buyers that the iPad is far more than a netbook replacement, or souped-up eReader. 

I think they have and I think they will. But those that are considering a $199 Kindle Fire for the holidays are not likely to be swayed by news of a new $500 iPad come late February.

Question: why did BigBlog and all the tech pundits, including:

• TechCrunch
• Harry McCracken of Time (yeah, I know)
• Business Insider
• ReadWriteWeb
• Fox News
• and many many others

*finally* catch up to my Amazon smartphone story?

Because they are "journalists" and were waiting for someone to send them a press release before they could write about it.

(I know. I'm repeating myself but it bears repeating. BigBlog aint giving you the news, aint breaking stories, is absolutely not doing any leg work to uncover truths or divine the future. They are re-posting what someone else feeds them. Period. They have earned your scorn.)

Note: I've also spelled out several reasons, in multiple posts, why there will be an Android-ized feature phone out by Q1 2013 at the latest, with Google and Motorola leading this effort. Will someone please type up my posts on this matter, and walk them over to the good people at Business Insider and TechCrunch so they can be clued in on this. Thank you.