Just one or two days before its new tablet starts shipping in the USA, Amazon has declared that its Kindle Fire device will be coming pre loaded with Hulu Plus and the Kindle Fire Newstand. This follows statements earlier in the week that Netflix and Pandora also will be included. Barnes & Noble will be feeling more than a little miffed.
Earlier in the week, when Barnes & Noble displayed its new Nook Tablet, it proudly commented Netflix, Hulu Plus and Pandora would come pre-loaded on the gadget indicating that Amazon’s Kindle Fire wouldn’t. But that was then.
On Wed. , Amazon took some of the shine off Barnes & Noble’s statement when it released a statement pronouncing that truly the Kindle Fire would be coming pre-loaded with Netflix and Pandora, along with programmes for Facebook, Rhapsody, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, and the Weather Channel, amongst others.
And now reports has come the Fire will also have support for Hulu And , with ESPN’s ScoreCenter, which permits sports fans to maintain a tally of the most recent scores from assorted sports leagues and competitions around the globe. Support for Netflix and Hulu And means Fire owners will be well placed to select from many thousands of Television shows and flicks, alongside what it already offers with its Amazon Prime service.
It should also ease some of the feedback Amazon has faced over its mostly closed eco-system. Those behind the promotion of Barnes & Noble’s new device must be feeling a little let down by this revelation, as Monday’s Nook Tablet display was ardent to focus on the incontrovertible fact that Hulu And would be absent from the Fire. ‘Well, perhaps the Kindle Fire does not have anything like the Nook Newsstand,’ Barnes & Noble company management could have been thinking till Fri. . In an announcement on its internet site, Amazon has just made another Fire-related statement, exposing the Kindle Fire Newsstand. Ouch! Amazon’s newsstand will contain more than four hundred papers and mags ( Nook Newsstand now offers around 270 ) optimised for the Kindle Fire, with a free three-month trial subscription of seventeen Cond Nast mags being offered to people who subscribe before March first. “The reply from publishers has been overpoweringly positive and they’re excited to make their mags and papers available on Kindle Fire, and we are adding new titles all of the time,” Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti claimed. How much weight this week’s mess of app-related reports will carry in the minds of clients having a look at both the Fire and the Nook Tablet is still to be seen. For most, factors like cost and technical specifications will undoubtedly play a larger part. Both pills start shipping the week after next the Kindle Fire on Tues. and the Nook Tablet on Thursday.
