3 Reasons Amazon Tablet is Only Apple Rival

By Michael Comeau, Minyanville


By Minyanville (NEW YORK) -- The word on the street -- courtesy of the New York Post and others -- is that Amazon(AMZN) is set to release a Google(GOOG) Android-powered tablet this fall.

Though Amazon's experience in hardware has been limited to its Kindle eBook readers, it has a very good chance of making the only Android tablet that really matters.

The Current Tablet Landscape
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that Apple's(AAPL) iPad is the top dog in the tablet game. In fact, the only tablet that has even a remote chance of toppling the current iPad 2 model is the iPad 3.

The numbers back me up on this.

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Research firm Strategy Analytics said that second-quarter tablet sales grew 330% year-over-year to 15.1 million units. Apple took 61% of the market, while Android held second place with 30% share.

Additionally, Apple competitors like Research in Motion(RIM), Motorola(MOT), and Hewlett-Packard(HPQ) all failed to generate breakout hits with their respective high-profile tablet models, some of which were Android-powered.

So Does the Android Tablet Really Matter?
Android tablets as a category are a very big deal since they're the only non-iPad game in town, but the individual models aren't at all relevant.

There are a ton of Android tablets out right now, and it's just too hard to tell them apart; any one could disappear and the buying public wouldn't miss anything.

And that's why nobody's making big money in Android tablets. No tablet builder is reporting blowout quarterly earnings numbers on the back of its Android tablets, and no stock is going up because of them.

The real beneficiaries of Android-tablet growth have been the players levered to the guts inside those tablets, like Arm Holdings(ARMH), Nvidia(NVDA), and SanDisk(SNDK), not the makers of the tablets themselves.

How is Amazon any different?

Amazon has three big things going for it:

1. Amazon.com!
Amazon.com is far and away the No. 1 retail website on the planet, seeing far more traffic than heavyweights like eBay(EBAY), Wal-Mart(WMT), and Best Buy(BBY). And that's not a sign of maturity; Amazon's sales are expected to grow a whopping 42% this year.