Descending from the hallowed heights of Beacon Hill into the valley of South Lake Union, the company that brought to market what was arguably the first successful eReader in modern electronic tablet making, “kindled” from the fires of eBook innovation, will once again rekindle the imagination of its Amazon fan base, even those who dare to gaze upon it in bright sunlight, with the release of a new Android Tablet this September.
The multi-functional, 9″ color tablet will be without a camera (according to rumor-mongers) but it will not preempt continued development on the Kindle side of the family. Two new Kindle versions are also being forged from high above the Pioneer Square Underground Tour. The first will add touchscreen functionality, and the second represent a new price leader in the category. Both of the new Kindles will remain as black-and-white, or gray scale, E ink models.
With Amazon shadowing what seems like Apple’s every move, from the iTunes store to iCloud-based media storage, the market counterpoint of an Amazon tablet may be the competitive jolt Apple has not yet seen from RIM, Google or Motorola, even though it is expected that an Amazon Tablet will take more market share from Google than it does from the iPad.
According to the WSJ which broke the story, the new tablet is not looking to simply be a better Nook Color, ” but a real tablet fighting the iPad and every other major slate thing out there.” The golden pipeline that links the Amazon Tablet to the rest of Amazon’s mediaverse may cause a few heads to turn away from iOS and iTunes and to those heavenly Beacon Hill gates in the Seattle sky! [24×7]
