Amazon has today announced the Kindle Fire, a full-colour, seven-inch tablet running on Android that retails for less than half the cheapest model iPad at just $199.
The online retailer unveiled the upgraded version of its Kindle e-reader at a press conference this afternoon. While the Kindle Fire is noticeably underpowered compared to the market-leading iPad - with a smaller screen and no 3G, camera or microphone - it comes with free cloud storage and a 30-day subscription to the Amazon Prime shipping and streaming service.
With a full-colour display and a dual-core processor, Kindle Fire will mean an increased focus on games - and goes some way to explaining Amazon's launch earlier this year of an Android download store.
While the margins on a $199 tablet are naturally far lower than those enjoyed by Apple on sales of its iPad - the cheapest model of which costs $399 - Amazon hopes that sales of e-books, music and movies on the device will more than make up the difference.
Amazon is trying to succeed where others - including Hewlett Packard, which discontinued its TouchPad tablet last month - have failed, but speaking to Bloomberg, Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair said the company was better positioned to succeed than those whose tablet offerings had fallen by the wayside.
"Amazon is really the only other guy, the only other potential tablet player that has a similar offering to what Apple has," he said. "If you look across their product offerings, they have content that none of the other tablet makers currently have because they have content on the media side."
Initial investor reaction to the announcement has been positive, with Amazon's shares up 3.8 per cent in the early hours of trading in New York. Kindle Fire will be released on November 15.
Source: Bloomberg
Comments
2This looks pretty cool. Anybody know what it's UK price might look like? I read £130 somewhere, but I think that might just have been a direct $:£ conversion.
I've never had a tablet, but I can't imagine myself wanting a camera or microphone on it. The lack of 3G would be what worries me, I guess.
Arg, I suppose this means there'll be no avoiding the Amazon App Store as an Android Developer. That whole price setting, "Free App of the Day" BS is extremely unattractive. Maybe once they get huge they'll pull back on that, give the devs a little more control........? Maybe.....?