News - Amazon tablet reportedly launching in October

[HEXUS]

The Android tablet looks likely to aim at the lower-end of the market.

Read more.

[vicar]

Any sneak pictures yet?

[crossy]

The screen size will be in the region of nine inches and it won't have a camera.

Sounds pretty good to me - 9" is probably a better size than 7" for eReading, but not as unwieldy as a larger model. And while I'm sure that there'll be plenty of folks who'll scoff at the "lack" of a camera, I really can't see the big deal. A camera on a pocketable mobile phone makes sense, on something the size of the tablet, it doesn't - unless you're talking about a front-facing one, which'd be useful for Skyping.

The story also speculates that Amazon is fretting about cannibalising Kindle sales with the new tablet, but Amazon probably doesn't care as long as people are being encouraged to buy stuff from it.

So just price differentiate them - launch this first one near Christmas at, for example £222 (twice the price of a Kindle), and I predict that they'll sell a bucketload. And if this means that the UK arm of the Amazon app store launches sooner, rather than later, then bring it on. Speaking of the Amazon app store, I assume that Amazon's been forced to put the UK rollout on hold because of the current legal spat with Apple.

I've got the Kindle app running on a 10" tablet at the moment, and it's sometime surprising just how easy and convenient it is.