VMware updated its View clients for Apple iPads and Android tablets today, and View shops will soon have an Amazon Kindle Fire client as well.

The tech previews of VMware View clients with PC-over-IP (PCoIP) support for Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux are also available. Previously, View clients for Mac OS X only supported Remote Desktop Protocol, which meant poor performance.

“We should have waited for PCoIP before delivering those clients,” said Pat Lee, director of end user clients for VMware. “But all of our clients now support PCoIP.”

The use case for running virtualized Windows OSes and applications on mobile devices using a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) client lies mostly in education — universities that want to adopt server-based desktops to deliver university apps on Macs, Kindle Fire and other student-owned devices, Lee said. And broad client device support is important to companies with bring your own device policies.

VMware has faced criticism for having a very short list of View clients, compated to competitor Citrix’s client support list, which still includes far more tablets and smartphones. There aren’t VMware View clients for the iPhone or Blackberry devices, for instance. VMware admits it must support all types of client devices in order to gain new VDI customers and will continue to grow its client support list, Lee said.

The existing clients integrate with View 4.6 and 5.0, and all are available for free to View customers. They are available from Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Market and, for Cisco Cius users, Cisco’s AppHQ. In addition, VMware View for Linux is available to download from the Ubuntu Software Center, and the Kindle Fire client will be available in the Amazon Appstore for Android this month.

The new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet got a lot of hype this week, but it might not make inroads among business users.

The Kindle Fire tablet boasts a 7-inch color touchscreen and promises strong integration with Amazon’s cloud services (everything from EC2, for speeding up Web browsing, to its streaming media library). Its $199 price tag is also alluring, especially when you consider the cheapest iPad costs $499.

Most of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet pitch, however, focuses on media and entertainment: watching movies and TV shows, reading books and magazines, playing Angry Birds, etc. Its only available connection is via Wi-Fi, and there’s no camera or microphone. Sure, you can check email and view documents, but the business user does not appear to be Amazon’s target audience for the Kindle Fire.

Amazon may be taking another approach in the enterprise market; VentureBeat reported Thursday night that the company is in talks to buy Hewlett-Packard’s WebOS operating system.

BlackBerry PlayBook discounts: A Fire sale?

One day after the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet launch, BestBuy cut prices on the BlackBerry PlayBook.

As of Thursday, the 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB BlackBerry PlayBook tablets were available at BestBuy for $299, $399 and $499, respectively — a $200 cut. Earlier in the week, Office Depot and Staples had dropped PlayBook prices by $100.

Research in Motion also dismissed an analyst report that the company will exit the tablet market as “pure fiction,” according to Reuters.

Cisco talks consumerization risks

A Cisco Systems exec discussed consumerization’s effects on IT security at this week’s GigaOM Mobilize conference.

New security methods will have to focus more on data itself and less on where that data lives, said Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager of Cisco’s security unit, according to GigaOM. He also said it’s “almost absurd” for IT pros to say no to consumerization, because it’s going to happen anyway.

Also at Mobilize, VMware discussed its plans to put its mobile virtualization hypervisor in the Android kernel.

Photo (cc) by kcxd on Flickr and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.