Kindle Fire + Dog GPS + Tablet Market Consolidates + Pinpoint Food

choi

(1) Don Clark and Arik Hesseldahl, Slim Profit for Amazon's Kindle Fire Tablet. Wall Street Journal, Nov 18, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 44571262047572.html
("Two early studies of the innards of Amazon.com's new Kindle Fire point to what many people suspected already—the company isn't making much, if anything": For the retail price of $199, UBM Techinsights and iSuppli estimate the total costs of parts worth $143 and $203, respectively)

(2) Ian King and Ari Levy, Qualcomm: From Chipmaker to Dog Catcher; The company is making devices for monitoring pets and the elderly. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Nov 18, 2011
http://www.businessweek.com/maga ... l_news+-+technology
("There are 77 million dogs in America, and more than 10 million go missing each year, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The current practice of “chipping” dogs, or implanting a microchip under the skin, is imperfect. The chips contain basic contact information, but a vet or animal shelter has to use a special scanner to gain access to it. Owners often forget to update their contacts when they move or change phone numbers.")

(3) Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai, PC Hardware Players to Phase out From Tablet PC Market in 2012. DigiTimes (Taipei), Nov 17, 2011.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20111116PD216.html

(4) Elizabeth Weise, Grocery Club Cards Double as PIs; Health officials can scan data for culprits in food illness outbreaks. USA Today, Nov 17, 2011 (page A1; title in print).
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/fit ... s-source/51245438/1

Note:
(a) loyalty program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_program
(b) PI stands for
private investigator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_investigator