Amazon's got a 10-inch tablet that will go into production early next year.
Amazon's much-rumored tablet is said to be going into production in the first quarter of next year. Digitimes cites sources from upstream component suppliers that say the as-yet-unconfirmed 10.1-inch tablet from Amazon will hit mass production in the first quarter of 2012. What's more, these sources say Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) will be handling the work order.
Talk of Amazon's tablet first surfaced in the spring, sparked by a blog post written by GDGT's Peter Rojas. A month later, Digitimes said that Quanta had received the work order for a 7-inch Amazon tablet and that the contract would contribute $3.5 billion to Quanta’s 2011 revenues. Now Digitimes says that Amazon plans to ship this Quanta-made tablet in October of this year, while the larger 10-inch tablet will not ship until 2012.
During an interview last May, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did not deny that his company was planning on producing a tablet. Instead he advised readers to 'stay tuned' and said that such a device would have to be supplementary to the company's Kindle ereader as opposed to replacing it completely. Bezos added that Amazon "will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device."
Where is the specs? What is the price?
If it is to be launched on 2012...it probably way out of date compared to other tablets and it is perhaps with certain specs...unless, the price is right...
Kindles have been reduced and reduced in price and no revision has happened for a while, but they have had an advertising campaign for a while.
They have been shifting old stock.
This will have no huge processing power and will pretty much be a web browser and kindle reader, with a colour screen. It will have minimal storage but will have an SD card slot and will be able to play music and videos.
Best of all, it will be dirt cheap and will support flash.
Prediction over, now lets wait and see.
If tablets are really here to stay then companies need to actually start innovating and bring new features to the table, not just another useless iteration of the same pile of junk that is already out there.
I hope it's not a Kindle replacement. Kindle's may not be tablets, but the screen and the e-ink that the Kindle uses make reading one practically the same as reading a book. As good as the iPad's screen is, it still isn't quite as good.
Perhaps the reason there is no new version is because one isn't needed. A device designed for a single purpose that has capabilities to do a limited number of other things doesn't need a new version very often when it does those things right. The only real improvement a Kindle could use would be an SD slot, however, considering the size of ebooks, the built in memory is quite sufficient.
So colour screen and web browsing are pointless?
Millions would beg to differ.
Not for those actually trying to read a book.
Considering that the reason the e-ink technology they use works so well and looks so much like a printed page is because it's not a standard LCD technology that can not, at least yet, be replicated with color screens,yes, it would be pointless.
Go look at the an ebook on Kindle and then go to the iPad or another color tablet. You will see a noticeable difference. Yes, putting a color LCD on a Kindle will make it be able to do more things, but sometimes it's nice to have something that does the main thing it's suppose to do, do it very well. The Kindle is fantastic because not only replaces getting a physical book, but makes reading a book on it practically the same as the printed version. Lose the quality of being a great ebook reader for the sake of making it do other things, then it loses the point of it's existance.
How about a double sided tablet, e-ink on the back, colour screen on the front, switch on and off each independantly, that would be cool.
Still, a cheap web browsing tablet would be cool.