Slash Lane
Citing sources in the upstream supply chain, DigiTimes reported on Friday that Amazon is "considering launching" a new lineup of Kindle e-book readers and tablets at the start of the third quarter of calendar 2012. Among those products is said to be a new 7-inch Kindle Fire with a screen resolution of 1,280 by 800 pixels, priced at $199.
That could prompt Amazon to sell another 7-inch model with similar specifications to the existing Kindle Fire, including an identical screen resolution of 1,024 by 600, at a price of $149. The new, less expensive Kindle Fire is seen by insiders as an attempt by Amazon to expand its market share.
Amazon was previously said to have been working on larger Kindle Fire models withs screen sizes of 8.9 inches and 10.1 inches that would be launched early this year. But Friday's report indicated those plans have changed, alleging that Amazon has halted development of the 8.9-inch model, while the 10.1-inch variety is said to be scheduled for release in the fourth quarter of 2012 or the first quarter of 2013.
When it debuted late last year, the Kindle Fire got off to a strong start, and became the No. 2 most popular selling tablet, behind only Apple's market dominating iPad. But demand for the Kindle Fire quickly collapsed, as customer satisfaction with Amazon's low-priced device was about half that of Apple's third-generation iPad, according to a survey from ChangeWave research released earlier this month.
Beyond the Kindle Fire, Amazon also reportedly plans to release a new 6-inch e-ink-based Kindle reader with an integrated backlight in the third quarter of 2012 at the earliest. Other e-book readers of other sizes are also said to be in the works for release later this year.
Malcolm Owen
Charles Martin
William Gallagher
Stephen Silver
Mike Wuerthele
Christine McKee
36 Comments
Danger here.
All from a company built on 1.5% profit margins. Amazon is a house of cards. If the wind shifts slightly, they are going to have massive losses
Simply turning the AC on in their warehouses has meaningful impact to their bottom line /s
With Asus and Google coming out with much faster dual core 720p models for $199, I am not sure why anyone who wants a 7" Android tablet would buy a much slower, lower resolution product for $150. I assume that the new $199 Kindle will be much faster as well and maybe higher resolution as well. $99 would be a better price for this.
Loss leaders that require users to consume more to break even financially are high risk. Even apple doesn't try lowering its margins (too much) to gain even more market share because it is clobbering the competition in market share AND being profitable at the same time. Instead, they innovate and invent things we wish existed (like 2048x1536 iPad displays or 2880x1800 MBP displays). And people say that Apple is just industry standard parts in a pretty package.
Wow, new crap at the same price and old crap at a lower price. Of course most people don't buy crap.....