Amazon CEO: Focus on customer is key

When you meet Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, you're immediately struck by two things. That legendary laugh, and his nearly unmatched focus on customer service. We know customers like low prices, we know customers like big selection, and we know that customers like fast delivery. And those things are going to be true ten years from now, they're going to be true twenty years from now. So we can count on those things and we can put energy into them. He met with us at Amazon Seattle headquarters to personally show off the company's new line of souped up, lightweight, Kindle Fire tablets. One of them is priced at only $139. Apple's cheapest iPad is nearly $200 more. One of the things you've done so well at Amazon is you've undercut all of your rivals by keeping the prices low. Does that same strategy apply to tablets? Yes. Our approach is premium products at non-premium prices. So we sell the hardware at break-even, so we don't try to make any money when we sell this hardware. And we hope to make money when people use the devices, not when they buy the devices. And so that's a very different approach from most companies. Most companies are building quite a bit of profit into the sale of these devices. The approach this time also includes a feature never seen before on any kind of device. It's called Mayday, 24-7 tech support. Thanks for using Amazon Assist. I see you hit the Mayday button. I'm your tech advisor, James. How can I help you today? And you can tap the Mayday button. It's just right at the top of the menuing system. And a tech support advisor will appear on your screen and can draw on your screen and guide you through things and teach you how to do things. I remember when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. One thing he said is, We're going to stand on their shoulders and go a bit further. He was talking about the Kindle, because we had launched the Kindle the day before. And that's what Steve was talking about. But my question now is, have you taken it up another notch? Are you standing on Apple's shoulders? I don't know. The way I would think about this is that there's room for a lot of companies to do well in this arena. You know, these tablets, mobile devices, very big market arena. Room for companies pursuing different strategies, different product features, all, you know, there's multiple winners. But in the smartphone arena, that may not be the case, as we've seen with BlackBerry. How did they stumble so badly? You know, I don't know. It's a very, it's a very reasonable question. And I'm sure it will be, you know, probably many, many case studies on the history of that company. In many ways, it's still a very innovative company. My guess is there aren't any easy answers to the question you just posed. But what about the questions about Bezos and his latest move, his $250 million purchase of The Washington Post? These are among his first public comments on the acquisition. Why did you get into the newspaper business? For me, I thought The Washington Post is an important institution, and I am optimistic about its future. It's a personal investment. I'm hopeful that I can help from a distance, in part by providing runway for them to do a series of experiments, and in part through bringing some of the philosophy that we have used at Amazon to The Post. That philosophy, he says, comes down to this. What has worked at Amazon is focusing on the customer, being very, putting the customer first, which is easy to say, but difficult to do. If you really are customer-centric, it's like being the host of a party. You're holding the party for your guests. Sometimes the host of the party is holding the party for the host of the party, and that leads to a different kind of party. For Amazon, the party couldn't be much better now, as its stock recently hit an all-time high. And the company is poised to become even more relevant in people's lives as it works to expand its popular same-day delivery throughout the country. Our view on this is, we know customers like their products fast, and so we work on things that we know customers like, and that's not going to change. Dan Simon, CNN, Seattle.