iPad News: Amazon Tablet Coming in 2011

Posted May 3, 2011 at 10:47AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: iPad News Tags: Amazon, apple, ios, tablet

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Online retail giant Amazon has already taken a step into the tablet market with its Kindle e-reader, and now the company is ready to make the leap into tablet territory with a full-fledged tablet set to debut later this year. According to a report from DigiTimes, Quanta Computer has been contracted to build a tablet PC for Amazon, with orders estimated at 700,000 to 800,000. DigiTimes also claims that E Ink is among the partners working on the project with Amazon. E Ink supplies the electronic paper display for the Kindle, and has been developing a color version of the technology for some time. The Amazon tablet is also reported to be using Fringe Field Switching (FFS) technology from E Ink subsidiary Hydis, which allows low-power color screens to be read in direct sunlight. In its commercials, Amazon has been dissing the iPad for screen glare, so this could be one feature that puts their tablet one-up on Apple’s. While a report like this generally makes me think, yeah another iPad wannabe that’s going to sink like stone, a tab from Amazon has more going for it than those from Samsung or Motorola. Amazon has a lot of things they don’t, like its own Android app store offering 15 million songs, streaming movies through Instant Videos, millions of e-books from its Kindle service and Amazon Cloud Drive for cloud-based storage. Unlike the other Android tablets out there, this one will launch with an existing ecosystem that rivals that of Apple.

While it’s doubtful that any rival will produce an “iPad Killer,” a tablet from Amazon that utilizes all of its many features would certainly have a better chance than any of the others launched so far. There is definitely a market for an Android tablet that can do just about anything an iPad can but doesn’t confine the user to Apple’s closed system. The new tab is expected to ship this summer or fall.

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