iSlate Will Help Apple Dominate ePublishing

Earlier today WSJ's John Paczkowski revealed that Apple is hosting an event in San Francisco on Weds Jan 27th (2 weeks before Macworld 2010), presumably to launch the hotly anticipated tablet device the technorati confidently call the iSlate. There's been rampant speculation for months in the tech press and blogosphere about this product's form factor, OS, UI/UX, hardware components, etc., but I think the most interesting discussion is around the digital content category it'll help Apple dominate. The iPod quickly allowed them to control digital music and the iPhone mobile apps... so what will it be with the iSlate? Stu Dredge had a great post this morning theorizing about which games would be best suited for a tablet-like device, and there's been a lot of talk about how its rumored 10" screen will make it the ultimate portable video player. While I think the iSlate has potential to be awesome for both of those categories... the big win for Apple will be in electronic publishing. I'm confident Apple has it's sites firmly set on Amazon's hot-selling Kindle, and believes it has the chops to deliver a much better consumer experience (the bar isn't set too high, frankly). Imagine all your favorite books, magazines and newspapers available for sale or subscription through iTunes, at super-reasonable prices (an Apple hallmark), that can be enjoyed in full color, with intuitive interactive tools and sharing features. Assuming they can get deals done with all the major publishers (talk about old media, oy vey!), that the hardware isn't prohibitively expensive (~$500) and that they also make ebooks & emags available for legacy devices (e.g. the iPhone), I think within 1 year they could easily dominate the space. Unless I've got this all wrong, publishers, particularly those on the newspaper/magazine side getting massacred by the online ad-supported business model, should be kissing Steve Jobs' (feet) about now. Meanwhile, I suspect Bezos & company are chewing copious fingernails in anticipation of the Jan 27th event.

Amazon MPS Could Enable Real App Store Competition

A couple of weeks ago, just before CTIA in San Diego, Amazon.com made an announcement I somehow missed in the cacophony of show announcements, but that just may come to be regarded as a watershed moment in the history of mobile commerce. The Seattle e-retailer, said in a press release, that it was opening up its 1-Click checkout service to mobile developers and distribution channels through a series of APIs and an "optimized mobile browser experience." They call the service Amazon Mobile Payment Service or Amazon MPS.

So why is this important? One of the key components of Apple's phenomenal, meteoric rise to success in the mobile content space has been their legacy billing infrastructure... iTunes. Think about it, how many companies have your credit card on file and have authorization to bill that card with one click of a mouse or the D-pad? Remember that the seamless, established billing relationship, inherent in operator billing, was what was sexy about mobile content (post-dotcom) in the first place... but unfortunately, it eventually became clear that operators didn't know how to sell content. Now that every handset OEM, Google, tout le monde is opening up an "app store" to prove that it can be a digital merchant, this basic component has gone missing. I think the notion that consumers will feel comfortable surrendering their credit card and opting-in to future billing in order to facilitate their first purchase on Nokia's Ovi Store, or that they'll gladly link that tired ole PayPal account (where's that password anyway?) to Blackberry App World, is hopeful at best. For most folks Amazon, like Apple, is in the billing circle of trust.

So finally it looks like there's a weapon in the arsenal that will allow the most ambitious mobile content retailers to do battle with Apple, without the carrier... at least on the billing front ('cause they still need to build a compelling retail experiences, by the way). The whole mobile content ecosystem (content owners, developers, publishers and consumers) is screaming for meaningful challengers to Apple's dominance. Without competition Apple will have free reign to define consumers' content options and dictate wholesale and retail pricing. My recommendation to Nokia, Samsung, RIM, etc. is to seriously consider Amazon MPS to help them fight the good fight in the interest of at least being a strong second player (because it ain't bad being Target)... or don't, and leave it to those savvy guys at Handmark, who have already implemented it, or to the series of application creators I've spoken with recently (who currently sell via WAP and online) who are keen to deploy this purchase mechanism within their own specialty retail stores.