Online retailer, digital media distributor, and California sales tax-evader Amazon has yet to confirm that its working on an Android tablet. But everybody pretty much knows that’s exactly what the company is doing — and it makes a lot of sense. Just like the Amazon Kindle has helped turn Amazon into a digital book selling powerhouse, an Android tablet could make the company an awful lot of money in Android app sales from the Amazon Appstore.
Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon’s tablet could launch by October. The report also suggests that there will be two new versions of the Amazon Kindle eBook Reader in the third quarter, one with a touchscreen and one without.
The Android tablet will reportedly have a 9 inch display and it will be produced by an “Asian manufacturer,” which is true of almost every other tablet on the market today. Interestingly, the tablet won’t have a camera, which will set it apart from most competing Android tablets. But it sounds like Amazon hopes to emphasize media consumption.
In addition to the Amazon Appstore and Amazon Kindle eBook Store, Amazon also sells MP3 music and digital videos which can be purchased, rented, streamed, or downloaded.
Earlier we’d heard that the tablet could launch in August, but now it looks like that date was either fictional or that it’s been pushed back. We’d also heard that the device could include streaming TV and movie content, and that it could have a quad-core chip and a display that functions in color and black and white modes. The Wall Street Journal hasn’t confirmed any of those rumors.
” California sales tax-evader Amazon”
Goodbye, Lilliputing.
I’d love for it to have a quad core, and dual function screen… Â However what shipping quad core SOC’s are there? Â TI’s OMAP4 isn’t quad yet is it? Â nVidia hasn’t announced releasing Kal-El, and they’re too into self promotion to keep the lid on that kind of design win without SOMETHING leaking… Â I haven’t heard of anything else unless Qualcomm has something up it’s sleeve.
I don’t know, but a lot of this just sounds too much like wish list stuff, kind of like what you heard about the initial iPad before it launched. Â Not to take anything away from that product, but I remember that there were rumors that the A4 was going to be a quad core with special pixie magic before we learned it was just a Arm Cortex A8 1ghz hummingbird optimization.
So take it all with a MASSIVE grain of salt.
Some companies will take longer than others and A8 is going to be around for at least another year.
But so far the Sony Vital is suppose to ship with both quad core processor and quad core GPU, pending any last minute cost cutting.
The Tegra 3 (Kal-El) has been announced to be in a couple of products like the Asus Eee Transformer 2 for around the end of the year release.
TI’s OMAP 5 will come out next year for a 28nm and Quad Core update.Â
The Snapdragon APQ8064 (Krait) chip will be Qualcomms quad core, at 28nm, offering that’s also due out sometime next year.
Freescale will be coming out with it’s quad core i.MX 6 series quad core.
While others should eventually go quad core and 2012-2013 will also be the beginning of the switch from Cortex A9 to A15.
Though the other question is whether ARM can continue their rapid EOL cycle as they continue to expand the range of ARM devices into more powerful and more expensive categories. So ARM may start slowing down when we reach 2013-2014, with the level of performance that makes people start wondering why they should always upgrade every year.