Will Amazon's Kindle Fire set the stage ablaze?

Amazon’s been steadily growing and they’ve gone from selling books to selling eBook readers. There’s a lot of hype surrounding Amazon for their Kindle Fire tablet, that’s likely to be launched sometime by the end of the year. A showcasing is set to happen today and there’s a lot of speculation on the web. We’ll be covering the launch, so stay tuned to our stream on our @Tech2eets Twitter page.

What’s the Kindle Fire likely to be like?

There are bits and pieces of information on the Kindle Fire. Among the most spoken about, is the size of the tablet itself. It won’t be a 9.7 or a 10-inch tablet, but will have a 7-inch capacitive screen and is likely to be powered by a 1.2 GHz processor (not a dual-core one). Storage will be in the form of 8GB of internal memory. This will be used to store books, apps and other forms of media. 3G won’t be available, but it’s safe to assume that wireless connectivity will be present  - Wi-Fi almost definitely will be present. The presence of a SIM card slot to enable EDGE/GPRS is doubtful considering the low price. More will be known when Amazon unveils the tablet later today.

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Will it be a PlayBook clone?

There are likely to be some similarities between the Kindle Fire and RIM’s PlayBook. RIM went to Quanta Computers to manufacture their PlayBook.

Possibly a close cousin to the Kindle Fire

It’s believed that Quanta used the PlayBook design as a base for the Kindle Fire, so some similarities between the two tablets is expected. As a tablet, the PlayBook was pretty good. The lack of apps and pricing was the reason it didn’t do as well as expected. 

Low pricing model

The thing that’ll make the Kindle Fire successful is its price. It’s likely to end up as low as $180 on the lower end and as high as $250. This is way cheaper than most of the popular tablets in the market today. Here in India, it means that the product might be available for anywhere between Rs. 8,500 to Rs. 12,500 and perhaps a bit more for shipping. This is still way cheaper than the cheapest RIM PlayBook, which sells for roughly Rs. 26,000. 

Designed specifically for eBook reading

Devices such as the Apple iPad 2 and other Android Honeycomb tablets in the market are priced at roughly the same as the RIM PlayBook. With great pricing and most of the features of the PlayBook, the Kindle Fire might just become the best value-for-money tablet around.

The ideal ecosystem - Amazon’s Android app store

The decision to launch an Android app store might have come as a surprise for many, but it makes perfect sense now. The customized app store should allow users to download more than just eBooks on the Kindle Fire.

Amazon’s recently launched customized Android app store

Being a full-flegded Android device opens the possibility to buy movies, music, apps and games. Amazon just joined ties with Fox for some streaming media content to Amazon Prime customers. This suddenly takes things to an all new level. The latest TV shows and movies are now accessible. 

The Kindle Fire will not replace the iPad

While the aggressive pricing of the Kindle Fire will disturb the peace and quiet in the Android tablet market, it’s not unlikely to derail Apple’s iPad.

The iPad isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon

Gartner, the research firm has predicted that the tablet is likely to eat into Apple’s share, but at the same time, Apple will manage to maintain a healthy lead over the other tablet manufacturers, at least till the year, 2015.

A bigger, better Kindle Fire

Amazon doesn’t plan on selling just a single Kindle Fire. An updated, larger model is expected to hit markets sometime in 2012. Quanta Computers, Taiwan, were given the task to mass produce tablets for late 2012 and this is news that has been floating around the web, since early 2011. Turns out, a 10-inch, 3G model might be in the works as well and a quad-core processor might be employed, too. This larger Kindle tablet might be a direct competition to some of the full-sized tablets being launched. 

The Kindle Fire might seem like just another media consumption device for the Amazon Prime service. How well it does will also depend on availability in countries outside the US. So far, no tablet manufacturer has been able to grab a substantial chunk of the tablet market. If Amazon plays its cards right, it might end up being the leading tablet manufacturer, after Apple, of course.