Kindle Fire tablet is official, has a $199 price tag
The notion of a highly customized Amazon-branded tablet is something has been rumored ever since Amazon started getting into the Android game. So it was not much of a surprise when, at their event today, the company officially announced the Kindle Fire tablet, along with two other e-ink readers.
Leading up to the announcement, Jeff Bezos went through a few of Amazon's many digital services. He mentioned the MP3 store and Cloud Player, Amazon Prime, Amazon Instant Video, and Amazon's EC2 and Cloud services. All this culminated in Jeff Bezos asking "Is there some way we can bring all of these things together into a remarkable product offering that customers would love?"
Of course, the answer to this question is yes, you can, with the Kindle Fire.
As far as specs, we know the tablet will have dual-core processor, 7-inch 1024 x 600 IPS display with Gorilla Glass. It also has small 8GB of internal storage, but most of its content is going to be stored in Amazon's cloud anyways. Also as was already rumored, the Fire looks a lot like the BlackBerry Playbook, with similar simple styling.
Although the tablet is based on Android and includes the Android Market, the device is really made to deliver Amazon content. Music and video will be played and stored in Cloud Player and Video on Demand, respectively, and books will be purchased from the Kindle store, and readable almost anywhere. There is also a customized browser that uses caches on Amazon's servers to improve load times. Also enticing buyers is the free unlimited cloud storage for media that comes with the tablet, as well as a month of Amazon Prime.
The price certainly makes the tablet appealing, but the very integrated and customized OS could turn out tobe either a big success or just a cumbersome add-on. If you are interested, you can preorder the Kindle Fire now, but it won't ship until November 15.
[Ars Technica]
