Can it?
"I'm saying Amazon may be on stronger footing because it can provide more of what the average consumer wants, and that ain't the hardware."
I will both agree, and disagree. Amazon's primary focus is on sales, sales, sales. Sell books. Sell movies. Sell 'things.' But what Amazon can't do with it's device is offer any form whatsoever of content creation with that device. Does it have the ability to download and edit photographs straight from the camera, then email them to your friends? Does it have the ability to create and/or view presentations? Does it have the ability to even connect a keyboard, much less write a novel, short story, report or any other kind of text-only or text-with-graphics document? How about creating original works of art that look like they were painted with oils or sketched with real charcoal pencils or watercolors? It's not only not about the hardware, but it's also about the ecosystem--the environment the device is intended to fulfill. Sure, a child can read a book or watch the teletubbies on their Kindle Fire, but can they color in a coloring book? Can they work their arithmetic flash cards?
The point is that the iPad in particular and tablets in general have the potential and the ability to be far more than "just a content absorption device." The tablet can be almost as much a creativity device AND a productivity device than something like the Kindle Fire--which is why the Fire has had no effect on iPad sales while effectively killing other Android sales.
