Just hours before the announcement, analysts predicted that the new Kindle Fire would cost between $250 and $300. Bezos and company have delivered a tablet that is not only affordable, but also provides a compelling multimedia experience. They bypassed the familiar Android UI and cooked up one of their own to highlight Amazon’s expansive offerings.
One exclusive feature of the Fire is the new Amazon Silk (tm) accelerated “split browser”. It uses an application on the tablet along with an application in the cloud to dramatically speed up web page loading. Using Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) technology to do the heavy lifting, it also incorporates predictive algorithms to push content to the browser, making it even faster.
While the specs don’t compete with other Android Tablets (only 8GB of storage, no camera or microphone), Amazon is leveraging its massive cloud capabilities to provide books, music, software and movies in a way that no other competitor can--except Apple. And, they are doing it at a fraction of the price of the iPad 2. It seems that the folks in Cupertino are well aware of what is coming as news reports state that they have cut iPod 2 production by 25%.
However, it does include a multi-touch 7” IPS screen with Gorilla Glass (tm) and a dual-core TI processor--features not seen on such an inexpensive tablet. It seems that this tablet is heavily subsidized by Amazon, as they probably expect to recoup costs from increased sales. Battery life is up to 8 hours. Not bad considering its size and price.
Will this change the tablet game? I think so. First of all, it signals the re-emergence of the 7” tablet size pioneered by the Samsung Galaxy Tab, plus puts downward pressure on future tablet pricing. This is good news for consumers and multimedia aficionados
The Kindle Fire is available for pre-order now and will ship November 15th.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051VVOB2/ref=famstripe_kf
