• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 11, 2010

Startled by the onslaught of companies entering the digital content arena, Amazon is looking beyond the Kindle to create other gadgets to keep up with the competition, according to a New York Timesblog post Tuesday.

That effort, led by Amazon's Lab 126 unit, would focus on making consumer devices that would allow seamless purchasing of Amazon content including its digital books, as well as music and movie rentals and purchases. But can Amazon prove itself more than a one-trick pony as a hardware maker?

Some kind of tablet device to compete with the iPad and other slate computers would seem to be the logical next step for Amazon. Forrester analyst James McQuivey earlier this year suggested the company roll out the "Kindle Flame," a full-color, full-media touch device to take on the iPad, with hardware development potentially outsourced to companies in Taiwan or mainland China. And because of its built-in e-commerce ecosystem, Amazon would have an inherent advantage over other tablet makers like Dell, HP and Lenovo, he argued.

Coming out with a single-purpose device like an e-reader is one thing; matching Apple with its own multimedia tablet would pose a bigger challenge for Amazon. At least when the Kindle was released, it didn't have a direct competitor from Apple to contend with. But the iPad has set the bar for tablet computers that Amazon would be measured against. The same goes for any mobile phone or music player the online retail giant might roll out.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has also often made the point that reading books is a specialized activity requiring its own device: the Kindle. Does he feel the same about creating purpose-built devices for watching movies, listening to music or using a mobile phone? If so, would someone have to own several different Amazon gadgets to consume various types of media? That sounds a bit unwieldy.

More important, how can Amazon match Apple's renowned expertise at melding hardware and software into iconic consumer products? The Times post pointed out that Amazon has nearly 80 job openings in its hardware division, with some proving difficult to fill.

If Amazon wants to beat Apple at its own game, one option might be to bring on Mark Papermaster, who led Apple's devices engineering division until exiting the company this month in the wake of Antennagate. Whether or not Papermaster was scapegoated for the iPhone 4 antenna problems isn't clear. (And whether any noncompete agreement would bar him from jumping to Apple is another question.) But the device has managed to sell like crazy despite the controversy. Amazon might just like to have that kind of problem.