Amazon is taking aim at the high-end tablet market, and the iPad specifically, with the unveiling of the next-generation Kindle Fire tablets - including a new 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at the launch event: “We are not building the best tablet at a certain price; we're building the best tablet at any price.”
The Kindle Fire HD starts at $299 for the 16GB model and $499 for the 4G LTE-enabled 32GB model (going up to $599 for the 64GB model). The Kindle Fire HD features a 1 920x1 200 pixel screen. The pixel density (254ppi) comes very close to that of Retina display of the new iPad (264ppi).
Amazon has also introduced a new seven-inch Kindle Fire HD with 1 280x800 screen resolution, starting at the $199 price point. The price of the original Kindle Fire has now also been dropped to $159, but its internals have been upgraded with a faster processor, double the memory and longer battery life.
While the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 models do not have rear cameras, they do have an HD front-facing camera (the iPad's front-facing camera is a VGA sensor). Amazon also claims the new tablets have the fastest WiFi connectivity with a pair of antennas (as opposed to the iPad's single antenna), dual band and MIMO support. The HD tablets also feature dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio.
“We're taking on the most popular price point for a tablet, $499, but doubling the storage and, incredibly, adding ultra-fast 4G LTE wireless,” said Bezos. “Kindle Fire HD is not only the most-advanced hardware, it's also a service. When combined with our enormous content ecosystem, unmatched cross-platform interoperability and standard-setting customer service, we hope people will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best high-end tablet anywhere, at any price.”
The pricing of the tablets is kept low through the inclusion of ads called “special offers” that appear when the screen is locked and in the corner of the home screen. Unlike before, Amazon will not offer users the option of paying extra for ad-free models, and no mention has been made of being able to opt-out.
New services unveiled by Amazon include a parental control system called Kindle Freetime (which limits the amount of time a child can spend on games and applications), and X-ray for movies which allows users to look up information without leaving the video playback screen.
Aiming at Apple
Amazon shook up the tablet market with the launch of the Kindle Fire less than a year ago. According to Amazon, this was the most successful product launch in the history of the company, as the tablet captured 22% of the US market in nine months - becoming the number two tablet after the iPad. The seven-inch tablet space has, however, recently been reignited with the entrance of the Nexus 7 from Google.
Taking a swing at Apple, Bezos said at the event that Amazon doesn't want its customers to be on the “upgrade treadmill”, adding that it is happy to have people still using five-year-old Kindle 1s. According to Bezos, there is little justification for overpriced tablets, and Amazon's goal is to make money when people are using their devices rather than just when they buy them.
The top of the range Kindle Fire HD, which features 64GB storage and 4G connectivity, still undercuts the top of the range iPad quite significantly, costing $599 as opposed to Apple's $829 price tag.
Reuters quotes Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey as saying: "Their first Kindle Fire tablet was a device that said 'See, we can tie all this together', but it wasn't a strong enough device. Now they've really come ready to show that their device line-up is going to be as good as their service line-up. They're tying those two things together and at a price that is very, very hard to compete with. It's going to push everybody else's price buttons - including Apple's.”
Apple is rumoured to be preparing to unveil a smaller, low-cost version of the iPad later this year, in order to better compete with the tablets from both Google and Amazon.
Kindle Paperwhite
Amazon's Kindle Fire has previously only been available in the US due to content licensing restraints, but later this year all the devices (apart from the 8.9-inch model) will go on sale in Europe (in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain). There are no indications as yet if or when the devices may become available in SA, but Kindle VP David Limp has said: "We want to get into as many places as we possibly can over time.”
In addition to the new tablet line-up, Amazon unveiled new “Paperwhite” Kindle e-readers, available in both WiFi and 3G models ($119 and $179, respectively). Speaking of the Kindle Paperwhite model, Bezos said: “It's thinner than a magazine, lighter than a paper.”
While a standard backlit screen projects light towards the user, the Kindle Paperwhite mimics ambient lighting, with the light coming from the bottom edge of the screen. This is said to provide 25% greater screen contrast than previous Kindle screens, while still using less battery power.
Specific details about each of the new devices can be seen here.
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