今天亚马逊Woot!网的主打产品是屏幕制造商优派公司（Viewsonic）生产的一款10英寸Android平板电脑，定价285美元。对于一款知名品牌的10英寸平板电脑来说，285美元是个便宜得惊人的价格，这也标志着某种趋势即将到来。

    如果你觉得电脑厂商很难生产一款只卖200美元的平板电脑，那么你不妨看看惠普（HP）、宏碁（ACER）、戴尔（Dell）或联想（Lenovo）等厂家生产的定价200美元的笔记本电脑。这种所谓的“上网本”基于更加昂贵的英特尔处理器架构，而且还有合叶等零件，以及其它更大的上部构造和好几个端口，此外它们还需缴纳25美元的微软Windows系统的许可费。它们还有1G内存、一个键盘、一个触摸屏、一个160GB的硬盘或一个32GB的闪存。尽管用料和做工如此复杂，但它们的卖价也只有200美元。

    再想想一款典型的平板电脑，以iPad、XOOM、三星（Samsung）或上面提到的优派平板电脑为例。它只是一个10寸的显示屏加触摸屏，连接到一个成本更低的ARM处理器架构上，此外还有一些传感器（如GPS、感应器、摄像头等），和比上网本小一号的电池。平板电脑除了使用了专用的触屏（一般造价在25美元上下）和某些成本低廉的传感器，其余平板电脑里有的东西，上网本也都有，而且平板电脑所使用的零部件往往造价更低。

那么，为什么现在大多数平板电脑的价格都在500美元以上呢？

    苹果公司去年推出了iPad平板电脑，率先抢占了电子市场的一片空白之地。不过就连在iPad发布之后，还几乎没有什么人相信iPad在问世的第一年里就会卖出上千万台。

    就连谷歌的高管也对平板电脑是“电脑”的理念嗤之以鼻。

    然而，苹果在9个月的时间里售出了1500万台iPad，整个电子行业都一下子幡然醒悟了。一般说来，一款电子产品从研发到上市需要两年的时间，随着厂商纷纷出台自己的平板电脑计划，供应链也要被迫做出大的调整。现在平板电脑的触屏已经出现了供应短缺，而且据传言苹果公司已经提前预定了价值40亿美元的触屏，从而使供应更加紧张。

    像优派和爱可视（Archos）这样的二级企业虽然规模较小，但灵活性更强，这两家公司生产ARM平板电脑已经有好几年的时间了，因此他们的步伐比其他厂商走得更快。而韩国三星几乎生产平板电脑的每一个零件（苹果iPad的许多零部件也是由三星直接生产的），因此它也在去年推出了一款自己的平板电脑。

    而戴尔、摩托罗拉（Motorola）和惠普等大厂商刚刚开始奋起直追。等到他们赶上来时，平板电脑的市场价格将出现骤降。

亚马逊的优势在哪？

    谷歌的Android系统是个开源操作系统。等到Android系统逐步完善，厂商就可以下载代码，为他们的硬件设备构建软件驱动程序，然后通过移动运营商将他们的平板电脑卖给商店，或直接卖给消费者。

    不过这里也有所分别。并非所有这些厂商都是开放手机联盟（OHA）的成员，而非OHA成员无法利用谷歌的Anroid市场和谷歌15万多个应用程序来销售自己的平板电脑产品（Android市场是谷歌为Android系统打造的一个网上应用商店——译注）。例如如果你购买了一款爱可视公司生产的10英寸平板电脑，你就无法联入Android市场。这就意味着你只能使用该平板电脑的自带应用。当然你也可以从其它设备上拷贝应用，不过对大多数用户来说，这个太复杂了，而且只有少量应用是可以合法拷贝的。这就是谷歌能够控制Android平台的关键所在。

    下面为大家做一下简单的科普：

    以下关于“Android市场”的事是一般人不知道的：

    Android市场只面向开放手机联盟的成员开放。要想联入Android市场，厂商就必须加入OHA。

    其次，一款设备要想联入Android市场，必须先经过一系列严格的硬件和软件兼容性测试。如果一款设备不能联入Android市场，这就意味着Android市场的应用很可能根本无法在该设备上运行。

    谷歌之所以维持了这样一个Android生态系统，让各厂家都参与进来，并且努力防止它真正走向分崩离析，其原因就是这些严格的规程。

    尽管许多来自中国大陆和台湾的大型厂商，如宏达电（HTC）、宏碁、华为、中兴和联想等可能都加入了OHA，但那些往往会推出平板电脑的小型厂商却并不是OHA的成员。此外，这些小厂商生产的平板电脑可能也不符合Android市场的标准，例如内置GPS和电子罗盘等装置。

    另一个问题是，当你安装一款Android应用前，你是否注意了应用的下载安装要求？我经常看到的一个要求就是某款应用适用于“通话状态”。不幸的是，平板电脑并不是手机，因此也没有什么“通话状态”，因此这款应用很可能无法在平板电脑上使用。这就是为什么从技术上讲，那些能够联入Android市场的平板电脑，本质上还是一部手机。

    不过，随着亚马逊应用商店的建立，如今每个厂商——包括那些非OHA成员在内，他们生产的平板电脑上都有了一个意义重大的应用商店。他们不需要加入OHA，也不需要递交申请，让谷歌来决定他们的设备是否配得上它的Android市场，就可以获取大量应用了。

    不过亚马逊自己对于哪种设备值得联入其应用商店也有自己的一套严格规程，这对厂商来说可能是好消息，也可能是坏消息。这意味着亚马逊并不会不加筛选地接受任何设备，但同时，它很可能也会对不生产手机、只生产平板电脑的公司打开大门，比如爱可视（而亚马逊公司恰好也在销售爱可视的平板电脑）。

    另外，Forrester的分析师莎拉•罗特曼•埃普斯数周前说过，亚马逊公司自己就是生产一款自有品牌平板电脑的好人选。这番话后来又被丹•弗洛默、约翰•格鲁伯和MG•西格勒等人反复引用。

    他们的观点的确很有道理：亚马逊已经通过电影、音乐和电视节目形成了一个媒体生态系统，它也拥有很多信用卡付费用户，并且亚马逊已经证明了它有能力构建一个Android一键式应用商店，而且它甚至能在许多方面超跃谷歌的应用商店。况且亚马逊还研发了自己的Kindle阅读器，并在上面销售电子书。

    那么亚马逊为什么就不能造出一款Android系统的Kindle平板电脑（或许可以起名叫Kindroid？），将所有这些优势结合在一起呢？

    不过，目前亚马逊应用商店里只有4000个应用，亚马逊还不想在此时推出平板电脑。更重要的是，微软（Microsoft）正在四处起诉Android设备的厂商，无论是谁，只要貌似走了Android的路子，就要等着在专利权上吃官司（除非这家公司也想发布基于Windows系统的设备，微软才会网开一面）。亚马逊也许不想卷入与微软或甲骨文的专利战争（它已经因为“应用商店”这个商标而陷入了与苹果的官司）——甲骨文公司一直因为谷歌对Java的使用而争辩不休。

    我们不妨坐看亚马逊是否会生产自己的平板电脑——我非常肯定亚马逊一定会这样做。

    与此同时，事情可能出现更加有趣的发展。

    尽管亚马逊也大量销售苹果的iPod和Mac等产品，但它并不销售iPad，而是销售许多价格更加低廉的第三方平板电脑。如果亚马逊将它的应用商店预先安装到这些设备上，那么这些使用亚马逊服务的低价平板电脑设备将形成一个不容小觑的生态系统。而且亚马逊既不需要应对专利权的问题，也不需要构建自己的硬件，就可以做到这一点。而平板电脑厂商也会欣然接受这一安排，因为这样一来，他们的平板电脑也能提供像应用商店一样全面的购买体验了。

    尽管要将亚马逊应用商店移植到一台典型的Android设备上有些困难，不过把应用商店预先安装到一台设备里却是非常简单的事。比如你只要打开你的爱可视平板电脑，它就会自动弹出一个窗口，让你输入亚马逊的账号和密码。然后你就可以在这台设备上享受流媒体电影、电视、音乐商店、应用程序以及电子书等各种功能了。

    （有些人表示，就连这种方式也太麻烦了，亚马逊必须生产自己的平板电脑设备，以达到操作的无缝化，就像它的Kindle阅读器一样。不过在这个问题上，还是让人们多谅解一下吧，就连苹果公司也是要求用户输入他们的账户信息的。）

    像爱可视和优派这样已经建立了自有品牌，但无法联入Android市场的二级公司，很可能会成为发布第一款内置亚马逊应用商店的平板电脑的厂商。

    亚马逊也很有可能使价格仅为285美元的低价平板电脑变得更加有趣。

    译者：朴成奎

    Today's Amazon/Woot! is a $285 10-inch Android tablet by display-maker Viewsonic. While $285 for a 10-inch tablet from a name brand seems surprisingly inexpensive, it is a sign of things to come.

    If you think it is hard to build a $200 tablet, take a look at a $200 netbook made by HP (HPQ), ACER, Dell (DELL) or Lenovo. Netbooks run on a more expensive Intel (INTC) architecture, they have hinges and bigger superstructures. They have a litany of ports and they have a $25 Microsoft Windows license. They have a Gig of RAM, a keyboard and touchpad and a 160GB hard drive or 32GB of Flash storage. And somehow they sell for as low as $200

    Then consider a typical tablet, be it an iPad, XOOM, Samsung or the Viewsonic above. It is a 10-inch screen attached to a cheaper ARM processor architecture, smaller battery, a few sensors (like GPS, accelerometers, camera) and a touch screen. Besides the touch screens (which typically cost about $25 or so) and some of the cheap sensors, everything that is in a tablet is in a netbook, at much less of the expense.

So, why do most tablets currently cost $500 and up?

    Apple (AAPL) caught the electronics world sleeping last year when they introduced the iPad. Even after its introduction, few thought it would sell more than a few million units in its first year.

    Indeed, even Google (GOOG) executives scoffed at the idea of a tablet as a general computing device.

    Apple sold 15 million in 9 months and suddenly the electronics industry woke up. But, with typical time to market of electronics devices at two years, tablets have required a major rejiggering of the supply chain. Touch screens are in short supply and rumor has it that Apple has further constrained supply by pre-ordering $4 billion of them ahead of time.

    Smaller, more agile second-tier companies like Viewsonic (above) and Archos, who've been building ARM tablets for years, were able to ramp up quicker. Samsung, a company that builds just about every part of a tablet, (and directly builds lots of parts that make up Apple's iPad) was also able to get a tablet out the door last year.

    The big guys like Dell, Motorola and HP are just getting up to scale. When they do, prices will plummet.

Where does Amazon fit in?

    Google's Android is an open source operating system. When Google completes Honeycomb, manufacturers can download the code, build software drivers for their hardware and sell it through mobile carriers, to stores or directly to consumers.

    However, there is a divide. Only some, not all, of these manufacturers and carriers are members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) and can sell these devices with the Google Android Market and its 150,000-plus apps. If you buy an Archos 10 inch tablet, for instance, you don't get the Android Market. That means you get the apps that came with the device and that's about it. You can sideload apps but that's a bit geeky for most users and only a few apps are legally available to sideload. This is where Google has been able to keep control of the platform.

    Here's a quick Primer on that:

    Here is the thing people don't know about the Android Market.

    Android Market is for OHA as in Open Handset Alliance members only. The maker has to join the OHA to get the Market.

    Second, the device must pass through a strict hardware and software compatibility suite of tests. If a device doesn't get the Android Market, there is a good chance Android Market apps will fail on it.

    These rigorous procedures is the reason it holds the Android ecosystem together and prevents it from truly fragmenting.

    While the big Chinese and Taiwan companies like HTC, Acer, Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo might be OHA members, all the smaller companies, which often make the tablets, are not. Plus the tablets may not conform to the Android Market requirements, such as having a built in GPS and gyroscopic compass on the device.

    Another issue is that when before you install an Android application, do you notice it has all these requirements you need to see before you download? A requirement that I see often is the apps looks for a "phone state". Unfortunately a tablet is not a phone and therefore has no "phone state". Thus the app may likely fail on the tablet. That is the reason why Android tablets that do have the Market are in fact, technically, phones.

    However, with Amazon's (AMZN) Appstore (and if you think Google is happy about its existence, look for Amazon's Appstore in the Android Market) every manufacturer, including those who aren't members of the OHA, can now have a significant app store on their machines without having to join OHA and without submitting an application and having Google decide if the device is worthy.

    The good/bad news for manufacturers is that Amazon has its own strict procedures on what is worthy and what isn't as well. This means that Amazon isn't going to accept just any device, but it will likely open the door to companies that don't make phones, like Archos (which Amazon happens to sell).

    Also, as Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps said a few weeks ago and has been subsequently repeated by Dan Frommer, John Gruber and MG Siegler, Amazon is a pretty good candidate to build their own device.

    The argument (and it is a good one): Amazon already has a media ecosystem with movies, music and TV shows. It also has a lot of credit card numbers and has demonstrated its ability to build an Android One-Click App Store which is in a lot of ways better than Google's own. Oh, and it sells a few eBooks on this device called a Kindle.

    Why not make an Android Kindle (Kindroid?) that ties it all together?

    But Amazon doesn't want to launch a device with only 4,000 apps (current Amazon Appstore count). More importantly, Microsoft has been suing anyone who even looks in Android's direction for silly patents (unless the company also plans to release Windows Phone devices). Amazon probably doesn't want to get into a patent war with Microsoft (it already is in an "App Store" trademark suit with Apple) or Oracle (ORCL), which disputes Google's use of Java.

    We'll see if Amazon builds its own device -- I'm pretty sure it is going to happen.

    In the meantime, something more interesting could evolve.

    Amazon, which also doesn't sell Apple's iPad, though they sell iPods and Macs by the boatload, sells a lot of cheaper third-party tablets. By pre-installing their Appstore to these devices, they could create a pretty impressive ecosystem of low-priced tablet devices that also use Amazon's services. And they could do this without having to deal with patents or building their own hardware. Tablet manufacturers would jump at the chance to offer a full, App Store-like buying experience on their devices.

    Although it is a bit difficult to get the Amazon Appstore on a typical Android device, a device with it pre-installed would be super simple. You turn on your Archos device and are greeted with a request to enter your Amazon login and password. You then have streaming movies, TV, a music store, Apps, eBooks and just about anything else that can be delivered to a tablet.

    (Some have said even that is too hard and Amazon would have to create their own device for it to be seamless, like Kindle. But give people a little credit here, even Apple requires users to enter their account info.)

    Look for second tier companies like Archos and Viewsonic that have established brands but are not able to get access to the market to be the first to release tablets with Amazon's Appstore built-in.

    And also look for Amazon to make that $285 tablet above more interesting.