What would Amazon do? – Navigating Amazon I

There’s more to what I say here. But I’m pressed for time and this should go out before the world spins more than necessary.

Here’s the meat: Amazon, although with roughly only about $6B in the bank, should grab Palm.

Amazon has a lot vested in its Kindle product line and having a highly qualified OS team and valuable intellectual property will really advance its goals as well as secure its product aspirations. There’s a strategy with which this will work, but Amazon, if you’re listening – go do it. You’ll thank me later.

Yes, there are better suitors for Palm. But for Amazon, Palm acquisition is going to give it a clear edge in the impending battle it faces versus Apple and give a great advantage versus iPad.

HTC, in a dire need for patents, should be snapping up Palm without blinking, but this acquisition is not goint to unleash the innovative potential of webOS or Palm as a device. Google seems the next possible candidate and it could, in turn, indemnify HTC. But the result will still be the same – no innovation, more nukes.

RIM, on the other hand, would be a great suitor. There is, after all (as depicted by fantasies around the iPad) a large segment of the market that requires a “smart” handheld device sans the phone.

But Amazon, you’re it. Think of the amazing things you could empower your customers with, the SMB ones, when you give them not only “Amazon Services” but a device that runs on a proven and advanced platform (webOS) for which there already exists a developer community, and a lot of respect in the open source world. And think of the places Kindle will light up due to now unleashed potential.

And while you’re at it, you know your Amazon Video on Demand really sucks. What you also need is Netflix to square that off and be able to pair it with any multimedia device you plan to offer under the Kindle line. And call it Rejoov, not Rekindle J (that’s a pun, but hey if you like the name, I like it too).

There’s more too. Square off your Platform as a Service offering and grab iPass and Zoho. You’re already competing with Salesforce.com and Oracle. And given your offerings of Amazon Web Services, EC2, Fulfilment by Amazon, Amazon Payments, and Mechanical Turk, these two will square it all off and give a complete end-to-end solution for the small and medium businesses – a segment that is highly lacking.

Yes, go now. Thank me later.

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~ by z on April 12, 2010.