Amazon could launch a 10-inch and or 7-inch tablet computer to compete with Apple's iPad, the RIM PlayBook, HP TouchPad and the army of Android tablets as soon as for Christmas.
Amazon.com is
aiming to release at least one tablet computer based on Google's Android
operating system in time for the holiday 2011 season, said an industry analyst
May 23.
Creative
Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin, who spoke to sources in Tapiei where many
computers are manufactured, said in a
PC Magazine piece that the
bookseller-turned-mobile-device maker plans on releasing a 10-inch tablet, and
possibly a 7-inch tablet later this year.
The tablets,
which will challenge Apple's iPad, the Android-based Motorola Xoom and Samsung
Galaxy Tab slates, Research in Motion's Blackberry PlayBook, as well as the HP
TouchPad, will feature LCD screens, support Adobe Flash and run Nvidia's Tegra
quad-core chip.
Bajarin's
report is the latest in a pile of evidence that has been steadily mounting
since Amazon launched its
Amazon Appstore for Android in March.
Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos stoked the fire 10 days ago when he
told Consumer
Reports to "stay tuned" on the topic of an Amazon tablet. One
week before that, Taipei-based
DigiTimes said Quanta has received tablet orders from
Amazon.
One month ago,
Engadget and gdgt Co-founder Peter Rojas
said he's almost certain Amazon is having Samsung
build a tablet that could run a custom version of Android rather than the
Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" tablet OS. Rojas said such a device could
launch as soon as this summer.
Now Bajarin
said a tablet device will use a display similar to the one in the Nook and the
Galaxy Tab, though Amazon originally wanted a screen that could switch between
the black and white E Ink-like display consumers are accustomed to using on
Amazon's Kindle and a color LCD.
However, such
a screen will not be ready for the market until at least 2012 or early 2013,
the analyst said. In the meantime, he expects the 7-inch tablet to be priced at
$349, with a 10-inch model offered for $449. Such aggressive prices undercut
the $499 pricing for the 7-inch Galaxy Tab on Verizon Wireless and undercut the
entry-level iPad by $50.
Bajarin is
intrigued that Amazon is entering such a competitive tablet market, with tens
of devices following the hype cycle Apple started with its iPad in April 2010.
The iPad and iPad 2 combined to sell over 20 million units to date.
By contrast,
the much younger Xoom and Blackberry PlayBook
may have sold 500,000 units combined over the
last two months.
While many
experts like to gauge new tablet offerings as possible iPad slayers, Bajarin
believes Amazon is trying to whip the Xoom, the
Galaxy Tab family (Tab 7, Tab 10.1, Tab 8.9) and
other Android tablets suffering from a more fragmented user experience.
Consider that
tablets are media consumption systems. It behooves tablet makers to provide a
simple ramp to media services, similar to the way Apple has done with its iPad.
With its Android application store, Web-based music and movies, and books,
Amazon can provide an efficient ramp to its own media services.
"I
believe Amazon looked at the Android market and saw that it was becoming
fragmented and that it would be quite difficult for any of these players to
create their own fully integrated app store, media cloud and storage solution.
As I stated earlier, any Android competitor can only do this in a piece meal
fashion, not in a highly integrated manner," Bajarin said.
"This is
why I believe Amazon is quite confident about entering the crowded tablet
market. It knows that combining its own app store with its content and storage
would allow it to compete extremely well with Motorola, Samsung, RIM and all of
the other tablet vendors, since its offering would be pretty close to what
Apple has," he said.
If Amazon can
do this effectively, it may easily become the iPad's toughest competitor to
date.
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