Tablets Scramble to Drop Their Prices for the Holiday Rush.

Thank you Amazon Fire!  Amazon sent the Android tablet market into a frenzy last week when they launched the Amazon Kindle Fire, an Android tablet customized for a seamless Amazon experience, for a whopping $199.

…and $199 is retail by the way, not just a black Friday gimmick.

In just over a week, Amazon has changed the game of Android Tablets.  Here are some examples of how the Android market is trying to keep up with Amazon’s pricing brevity:

  Barnes & Nobel dropped the Nook Color (the traditional rival of anything “Kindle”) from $249 to $198   and launched the Nook Tablet, a remarkably similar device with additional memory, priced at $249. 

Walmart dropped their already inexpensive Vizio 8″ tablet from $250 to $198.

Latest to jump on board is the BlackBerry Playbook made by RIM.  This fledgeling tablet has been given new life by a lower price point.  For a limited time the price is being dropped from $499 to $199, just to compete with the falling price brought on by the Kindle Fire.    This tactic is working as well.  A Best Buy representative said that the Playbook is selling out across the country.    

              

Why Would Amazon do This?

Amazon took the lesson from the HP Touchpad firesale earlier this year.  The computer giant, HP, liquidated all Touchpads and discontinued the product.  HP slashed the price from $399 to $99, and perhaps influenced the direction of Android tablets forever.  Touchpads sold out immediately, an android port (CyanogenMod 7 Alpha) was developed to replace the lack-luster windows-based OS , and the Touchpads had an immediate underground following.  As a matter of fact, the upcoming Android upgrade, entitled Ice Cream Sandwich, will increase the usefulness of the Touchpad.  Incidentally, the HP’s now discontinued Touchpad was the biggest selling Android tablet of 2011.

So, the lesson in all of this?  Field of Dreams says it all.  If you build it [and sell it for the right price] people will come.  The $200 line has been crossed and the Android world is reeling to figure out new price points.  People will buy a cheap 7″ with limited bells and whistles over a fancier 10″ tablet that is triple the price.

The next year in the world of the Android operating system will be an education to watch.  Perhaps we will see a redefining split between competing middle-class and business-class Android tablets.  Perhaps we will see the industry push the price back up and take the hit in customers.  Perhaps, on the other hand, Android will be able to do what Apple cannot…hold their prices lower than the competition.

Again, thank you Amazon Fire!  The sky is falling.  You have changed the  tablet pricing rules.  The race for consumers is on and this consumer will be actively looking on to see who comes out first!

Cyberbullying…a realization

“You gotta take a look at this!”  These were the first words my wife said as I walked through the door the other night.  She calls me over to the computer only when there is something outrageously funny or horribly offensive and I could tell that tonight would be the latter. I walked to the computer and read through a facebook conversation posted on one of my daughter’s friend’s wall.  We read through the entire conversation together.  It was filled with a horrific medly of insults, vile language, and threats about what would happen at school the next day.

Now, let me be clear, it was not directed to my daughter.  But our daughter’s friend was the bully, and we had never seen that side of her.  In person she is a sweet, considerate, quiet 13 year-old.  What was it that caused her to change into a cyberbully?  Why did she feel she had free reign to unleash such garbage toward another girl online?

My wife and I decided to stop the attack.  We chose to approach her by way of texting.  Once this friend realized that her actions were public, she changed her toon.  The conversation was immediately deleted off of her wall, and she was mortified that we read through it.  She has apologized over and over to us.  She apologized to the girl she cyber-attacked.

A national organization called Fight Crime: Invest in Kids did a study in 2006 that found 1 in 3 teens have been the victims of cyberbullying and 1 in 6 preteens have been victims (read it at http://www.fightcrime.org/sites/default/files/reports/cyberbullyingteen_2.pdf).
With 33% of teens being victims, I wonder about how many are committing cyberbullying.  I also wonder if it translates into actual bullying at school, or if it stays in the virtual world.  A quick conversation with one of my daughters revealed that it does, but has evolved since the days of stuffing people in lockers and throwing their binders down the hall.  Now it is even more psychological.  “They just laugh around you,” my daughter said.  “Everywhere you go, people just start laughing and looking at you.  There is no reason for it….they just laugh.”

So, I wondered, at what point do we grow out cyberbullying, or bullying at all for that matter?

Never.

I was at a presentation of Loralee Choate, creator of loraleeslooneytoons.com.  She was talking about the highs and lows of blogging.  The highs, she explained, included a trip to the White House and brandwork with McDonalds (both increadible stories).  The lows had to do with cyberbullying.  She described a friend she had for years in the ‘real’ world who turned into her biggest troll (cyberbully) in the ‘virtual’ world.  It was a dual relationship.  This ‘friend’ would smile at her, then get online under another name and troll her website.

There is a certain sense of invincibility people feel online.  There is an assumption of confidentiality online as well.  I don’t know what can be done to educate the public that the United States Supreme Court found that there can be no expectation of privacy online.  After all, people have been feeling invincible in vehicles for more than 50 years when they are not.  I can’t imagine what technology will be in 50 years, but I hope the virtual learning curve is faster than the drivers’.

Until then, it must come back to oversight.  Parents, webmasters, colleagues, any third party.  Cyberbullies need virtual babysitters, and with so many of our youth in danger of being victims of it, or heaven forbid turning into the cyberbullies themselves, we must be aware.

So that is the point of this blog.  Cyberbullying is out there.  It is real.  It is around.  I admit I don’t understand the rush some people get from destroying another’s self-confidence.  Until reading that facebook conversation with my wife, I didn’t think it was as an immediate danger as it is becoming.