News - Amazon launches the Kindle Fire tablet at $199

[HEXUS]

Aggressive pricing should be enough to shake up the tablet market.

Read more.

[Smudger]

Kindle Touch announced as well, at about $99...

[Brewster0101]

At last a tablet that everyone can get on board with from a reputable company....

[cheesemp]

Interesting but no UK launch details... I think it's a fair bet too that it'll be £199 when it launches over here.

[Scott B]

Interesting but no UK launch details... I think it's a fair bet too that it'll be £199 when it launches over here.

Just this so far - looks like the entry-level Kindle and we're getting rinsed on the price: http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=31948

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Interesting but no UK launch details... I think it's a fair bet too that it'll be £199 when it launches over here.

The Kindle 3G costs £150 here and $190 in the US. Add 20% VAT and the price in the US would be £145.

It also seems I was right that Amazon would use a 7" inch IPS panel like in the Color Nook.

[scaryjim]

At first glance it looks like we're being screwed on the new kindle, but actually the $79 price tag is with "special offers" AND a "sponsored screensaver", so basically it's being ad subsidised. The unit-only price is $109, so once you've added VAT to that and done the conversion the £89 UK price isn't actually *that* bad (the US prices comes out to ~ £82).

But yeah, no UK details for the touchscreen Kindle or the Fire yet...

On the plus side, the Fire has 8GB of built in storage, so once it's rooted and rommed it should be a decent budget tablet

Oh, and one last edit: whilst Amazon has announced the Fire today, the US kindle store says "Our all-new Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011. Orders are prioritized on a first come, first served basis."

[Gordy]

Interested in this, I said a while back that an amazon tablet would be at last some true competition for the iPad. If they can hit the right uk price point, I'd be tempted.

[The Hand]

I'm hoping it won't be more than £150..with RIM possibly cutting Playbook prices, Amazon need a clear price difference.
Here is the story on the BBC site with Jeff Bezos CEO pacing up and down to the point the camera man couldn't keep up with him! I was half suspecting "Apple crowd" style whooping for some reason lol. They'll be enough of that when the iPhone 5 comes out soon I suppose.

[Scribe]

I'm glad to see the kindle technology progressing, I own a 3rd gen and it's great, I kept thinking I need touch-screen though for the web-browser.

But that silver is just tacky! I think I'll wait for the 5th gen!

[crossy]

At last a tablet that everyone can get on board with from a reputable company....

I'm sure that Asus, Motorola, Sony etc will be highly delighted that you don't consider them "reputable". Hopefully, I'm right in assuming that what you meant was that this is priced about/just-above the 2nd tier vendors (Disgo, Archos, Viewsonic, etc) but from a 1st tier company.

Interested in this, I said a while back that an amazon tablet would be at last some true competition for the iPad. If they can hit the right uk price point, I'd be tempted.

Trouble is that the iPad acolytes will (sneeringly) point out that the Fire's "only" a 7" screen. Totally missing the point that the smaller screen is ideal for the eReader*, music, apps sales that Amazon want. Plus - and I know I've said this before - a 7" device is just feasible for a large pocket, whereas the iPad (and all the other tablets) are definitely rucksack/handbag/briefcase (delete as appropriate) material.

If I hadn't already got a pretty decent 'droid tablet, and Amazon manage to slot this in the £150-190 price range then I would definitely have signed up for a pre-order. If I was Amazon I'd launch at a "special offer" price - hold that until Christmas and then apply the real price from then on. Do this, and I confidently predict that they'll sell all they can stock, and grab a pretty decent slice of the market for themselves.

Oh, and that's assuming that they pull their finger out and get the UK app store released to the public.

(* yes, I know eInk screens are better for eReader devices - hi Saracen - but I'm assuming that the Fire's a genuine multi-purpose device in which case eInk wouldn't cut it).

This includes books, magazines music, video, apps and games, all of which Amazon has developed its own electronic stores for

Didn't know that Amazon had an e-magazine store - live and learn. I was thinking of converting my posted mag's to "electronic" format - but put off by most of them being more expensive than the print version and using Zinio - which doesn't seem to allow you to hold onto back issues.

[Scott B]

Didn't know that Amazon had an e-magazine store - live and learn. I was thinking of converting my posted mag's to "electronic" format - but put off by most of them being more expensive than the print version and using Zinio - which doesn't seem to allow you to hold onto back issues.

http://mobile-device.biz/content/item.php?item=31920

And from the press release: "Hundreds of magazines and newspapers - including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Wired, Elle, The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan and Martha Stewart Living - with full-color layouts, photographs, illustrations, built-in video, audio and other interactive features are available from the new Kindle Fire "Newsstand." Kindle Fire customers will enjoy an exclusive free three-month trial to 17 Condé Nast magazines, including Vanity Fair, GQ and Glamour."

[TheAnimus]

I must admit I agree with your comments about cost/loss. Its about building userbase. Amazon prime is a genious thing, and I'm a user of it in the UK, sometimes getting things that evening has saved me £50 in one go, I suppose I'm one of the types their hoping to grow on.

In the aug plunge I nearly bought some amazon, I didn't because of the tablet roumers, I thought they've got to be nuts, look at how badly all the reviewers treat anything non-apple, and that the apple one is actually no better really..... Why compete? You'll just get burned.

By making a good, <$200 one hand if you want device, that fits in a coat pocket I think they've cracked it. I would be very suprised if you can buy one for love nor money at christmas, and I think amazon will have gone all in on making them in bulk to get the lower price. Espesually as they saw how fast the HP fondleslab went.

I really think they will have a winner on their hands, but personally I dislike hte one ecosystem thing they will be pushing.

[Saracen]

....

(* yes, I know eInk screens are better for eReader devices - hi Saracen - but I'm assuming that the Fire's a genuine multi-purpose device in which case eInk wouldn't cut it).
....

Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, it's a case of the right tech for the right purpose.

For an e-reader, I wouldn't buy a device that did not have the advantages of e-ink. Some people would, including a couple of friends (though one's now talking about buying a Kindle), but I wouldn't, regardless of price. But for a tablet, I wouldn't buy one with an e-ink screen, either. For a tablet, I want colour, decent performance, capacitative screen, etc.

Somewhat, it's about personal preference, but it's also about the use to which it's put. Sure, I can browse the web on my Kindle, but other than playing with it to prove it works, I never bother. But I use it a lot for reading books, and for referring to documents. But if you want it as a multi-purpose device, e-ink is probably not ideal. e-ink readers are extremely good at their prime purpose, and very compromised at most other things. A tablet, in my view, is designed as a more generalised, far less single-purpose device, and I entirely agree, e-ink wouldn't cut it for that. But by the same token, while I might use a colour tablet to refer briefly to an e-document, I wouldn't even try to settle in and read several hundred pages of a novel on one.

Horses for courses ....until, of course, someone comes up with a screen tech good enough and adaptable enough to do a superb jobs of both types of use. Id love one, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Saracen]

....

I really think they will have a winner on their hands, but personally I dislike hte one ecosystem thing they will be pushing.

That's the absolutely critical point for me. I like what I see of the Fire, but I'm concerned about just how tied down it may be. I understand them using it to leverage sales of media, and providing it can be used without locking yourself in, I'm still interested. But if it's too tied down, I won't bother.

The Kindle is a good analogy. Amazon made a lot of the way it ties in to their stores, with Whispernet 3G etc. What wasn't quite so clear from their marketing (though reviews and user comments cleared up a lot of points) was quite how functional it was outside of that environment. For instance, it wasn't clear from marketing what you had to do to get PDF files on it, and I sure wasn't submitting my PDFs for Amazon to converet and send back, but that was kind-of implied by their marketing. You can do it that way if you want, but you can also do it yourself. And Amazon went on a lot about their own e-books and AZW, but what about e-books from other sources. Calibre resolved a lot my of concerns there. Despite some initial reservations, the Kindle proved idea for my needs. The Fire might too, but I want to see just how they've implemented things, and the implications of their "cloud" services, and just what that implies for users, how locked in you are or aren't. I sincerely hope that you aren't locked in, or that avoiding being locked in doesn't make day-to-day usage a hassle. If it does, I'm more likely to stump up for a Xoom or Transformer. But if they provide that integration without making it a pain to avoid, then Fire may very well be for me. I hope.

Either way, I see a tablet in my future .... but only when the price and spec is right. And I'm conscious that it's still early days for tablets (at least, in their current reasonably appealing form) and I'm not prepared to jump too early and pay early-adopter premiums if prices are going to drop like a stone (and my bet if they will). If necessary, I'll wait, even if the wait is measured in months or even years.

[crossy]

I sincerely hope that you aren't locked in, or that avoiding being locked in doesn't make day-to-day usage a hassle. If it does, I'm more likely to stump up for a Xoom or Transformer. But if they provide that integration without making it a pain to avoid, then Fire may very well be for me. I hope.

Darned Transformer - since I got mine, I've apparently spent a huge wad of cash with O'Reilly - the pad's too damned good for technical publications. And then when I discovered ORA's "Deal of the Day", and then the free FTP and ssh clients ...

Getting back to Amazon, am I right in thinking that the "Touch" is a direct replacement for the current £115 3G-less model? So that's WiFi only (not a big deal in my book) and no damned ad's popping up all over the place?

Reason being is that Saracen's posting's have got me thinking whether a sub-£100 Kindle would be a good birthday present to myself. I'd still prefer to have my technical books (complete with colour illustrations) on the Transformer but - as Saracen says - eInk might be a good way to downsize my huge existing (Dale Brown etc) library into something a bit more accessible. And maybe the refresh will be a little less "in your face" than the current Kindle.