That's a great quote from Jon Evans, and it fits well with Steve Yegge's perspective on Jeff Bezos:
"I mean, imagine what it would be like to start off as an incredibly smart person, arguably a first-class genius, and then somehow wind up in a situation where you have a general’s view of the industry battlefield for ten years. Not only do you have more time than anyone else, and access to more information than anyone else, you also have this long-term eagle-eye perspective that only a handful of people in the world enjoy."
Jeff Bezos is playing chess simultaneously with a number of industries and so far he seems to be winning.
He's not winning across the board; Kindle Fire has not significantly impacted the tablet market (I think it has actually lost share recently), and no one expects their phone to do so either.
And while Amazon has a good digital media business, it would be a stretch to say that they are beating Google or Apple in that space. Only in books does Amazon have a strong digital media share.
> Kindle Fire has not significantly impacted the tablet market
I don't think that's the point of it. Tablets and phones are insurance policies for Amazon; so that they can have some minimal leverage with Apple and Google going into any negotiating table. I don't think it's a coincidence that they started working on them when Apple started messing with the Kindle app.
"I mean, imagine what it would be like to start off as an incredibly smart person, arguably a first-class genius, and then somehow wind up in a situation where you have a general’s view of the industry battlefield for ten years. Not only do you have more time than anyone else, and access to more information than anyone else, you also have this long-term eagle-eye perspective that only a handful of people in the world enjoy."
Jeff Bezos is playing chess simultaneously with a number of industries and so far he seems to be winning.