Amazon to Release their Tablet – the "Kindle Fire" on 28 September

Looks like the tablet wars is about to get another combatant. However – this one will come from a company who actually understands user experience better than most. Amazon.
Right now the tablet market is a little one sided. It is pretty much iPad versus the rest. Those of us who follow tech news everyday have grown a little tired of “JAAT” (Just Another Android Tablet). Every day we read about another company jumping into the tablet game with no clear differentiation in their products. All of them share similiar form factors and run the same OS, so we just do not care anymore. But Amazon’s latest Kindle might be different. The rumour mill has now kicked off with an article by MG Siegler -Techcrunch apparently has some sources which told them a lot about the device.
The Kindle has always been a pretty simple device – a e-book reader with some small additional features. But its success relied on its content back-end. It had Amazon’s giant e-book library at its disposal. Now with the Kindle “Fire”, Amazon is going to sell a tablet class device firstly as e-book reader, but this time it gains a lot of multimedia power. For example – it will be able to connect to Amazon Prime for music. What should be pointed out however is that the Fire will probably rather focus on content consumption than personal information management. Think movie player, not exchange.  So do not bet on a email client – but we might be surprised. It is Android after all.
So what about the hardware design? No photos are yet available but current sources suggest a similiar form factor to the Blackberry Playbook. So you are looking at a 7 inch backlit display, hopefully with not as thick as bezel as the Playbook. Current rumours point to the fact that the Kindle Fire is also made by the same designers as the Playbook. Internals will apparently be a dual core 1.2 GHz processor, but that is about all that is known. Also – it will not run Honeycomb (Android 3.x). It will be running Android 2.1, with a custom Amazon interface. Risky move, but it does focus the device more on the current Kindle user, instead of techies who want Honeycomb. Those techies can of course just download the Kindle App on their device of choice.
The other differentiator of Kindle Fire might be its price. Kindle’s recent price drops have done wonders for its sales. If Amazon can somehow make it land under $250, they can expect massive uptake. Also, time will tell whether people are willing to give up their e-ink displays on their Kindles…
Luckily we do not have to wait too long to see it – Jeff Bezos will be showing off the Kindle Fire tomorrow.
 
Source: TechCrunch