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Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet

By | July 13, 2011, 3:54pm PDT

Summary: While Amazon still hasn’t officially announced it, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Android Linux Kindle tablet is on its way. Here’s what to expect from it.

I wish Amazon would stop being coy about its plans for an Android Linux-based Kindle tablet and just announce it already. While Amazon still won’t tell me that they’re building one, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Amazon is planning releasing an iPad Rival.

OK, enough is enough. While I don’t have any hard facts that anyone from Amazon will officially tell me, here’s what my sources have been telling me to expect. What I’m telling you here is from people both inside Amazon and from Amazon’s partners. Some of it may be wrong. I’m sure though that the broad picture is correct.

1. The Kindle Tablet Specifications.

The Kindle Tablet is going to be made by Quanta Computers. It will run Android Honeycomb 3.1. On the hardware side it will have dual-core OMAP 4 (ARM Cortex A9) processors running at 1.5GHz. It will have a solid-state drive (SSD) for local storage. The device will have a 9-inch display.

There will be two versions. The first will support Wi-Fi only while the other will also include 3G support. The 3G model may come at a subsidized price with support from a major telecommunications carrier.

2. The Cloud-based Kindle Tablet

The SSD isn’t going to be that big. I expect it to start at a mere 16GBs. That will largely be because Amazon is going to strongly encourage you to use Amazon Cloud Drive to store your music. Video? They’ll want you to rent your favorite TV shows and movies from Amazon Instant Video.

With the Kindle Tablet, they’re going to want you to keep your goodies on the Amazon cloud, not on the device itself.

3. The Amazon Business Kindle Tablet

Don’t think for a second that the Kindle Tablet is going to be somewhat like the Barnes & Noble Color Nook was at its start: an e-reader that could also be used as a tablet. This will be a full tablet from moment one.

The Kindle Tablet, besides having the usual collection of Android application via the Amazon AppStore for Android, will also have serious business applications. I’ve been told by big-time independent software vendors (ISV)s that they’ve been approached by Amazon to create business applications to the Kindle Tablet.

I’m not talking mini office software suites such as QuickOffice or ThinkFree. No, I’m talking about interfaces to enterprise-level applications. Which ones? That would be telling stories out of school, suffice it to say you know the names.

4. Amazon will target Apple’s iPad

Don’t think though that just because Amazon is taking a surprising interest in the business space that they’re ignoring the 800-pound gorilla of tablet computing: the Apple iPad 2. They’re not. There will be a lot of well-tested entertainment applications and games for the Kindle Tablet.

Unlike so many other Android tablets, I expect Amazon to price its tablet very aggressively.

5. Get ready to say good-bye to the dedicated e-reader.

I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again the dedicated e-book is on its way to history’s trashcan. You’ll still be able to buy e-book readers from major vendors for this coming holiday season. Christmas 2012 though? I doubt it. There will be inexpensive e-book readers, but I expect Amazon and Barnes & Noble to only be offering tablets like the Kindle Tablet 2 and the successor to the Barnes & Noble Nook Color.

How close am I? Well, we’ll see in October 2011 when the first Amazon Kindle Tablets will arrive. Personally, I’m looking forward to it. While Android tablets are finally making in-roads in the tablet market, we still haven’t had a big Android tablet release, a tablet that made people actually pause before buying an Apple iPad 2. The Amazon Kindle Tablet will do exactly that.

Related Stories:

Amazon tablet drumbeat picks up; likely to land by October

Amazon reportedly preps tablet orders: Volume points to subsidized devices

E-Books readers sales rise, but are tablets really lagging?

Review: Barnes & Nobles’ Nook Color goes Android Tablet

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Amazon.com Inc., Kindle Tablet, Tablets, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system

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Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a freelance writer. He does not own stocks or other investments in any technology company.

Biography

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, aka sjvn, has been writing about technology and the business of technology since CP/M-80 was the cutting edge, PC operating system; 300bps was a fast Internet connection; WordStar was the state of the art word processor; and we liked it!

His work has been published in everything from highly technical publications (IEEE Computer, ACM NetWorker, Byte) to business publications (eWEEK, InformationWeek, ZDNet) to popular technology (Computer Shopper, PC Magazine, PC World) to the mainstream press (Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, BusinessWeek).

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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
czorrilla 21st Aug
@dave@...

Excellent post!! Nothing else to say after that.
View in thread
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Looking Forward to It - I think...
jpr75_z 13th Jul
I love my Kindle. It is great for reading books where ever and when ever. But an LCD display tablet to replace it? No more e-ink, right? So, just another tablet with the limitations that go along with them? Amazon has done a good job with its hardware so far - I guess we will have to see what this turns out to be.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
Rabid Howler Monkey Updated - 13th Jul
A business-oriented tablet with enterprise apps is not really surprising given that Amazon EC2 is geared towards business. Amazon is a big cloud player for business too. This will allow them to participate on the client side.

Regarding consumer-oriented tablets, as you have blogged before, both Amazon and Barnes & Noble have very substantial media offerings with which they can use to subsidize the sales price a bit. This should enable them to significantly undercut other Android-based tablet mfrs. As well as HP-Palm's WebOS tablets and RIM's Playbook.

Also, from your time at CW, Amazon has apparently already reached an agreement with Microsoft regarding Linux, including Android, and Microsoft's supposed patents. (Their EC2 server offerings include Linux.) Thus, it is possible that some portion of the tablet's sales price, say $5 to $15, may go to Microsoft. Unless, perhaps, Amazon has reached some sort of trade deal with Microsoft such as providing special access to it's media (especially books and other print media) offerings.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
mm71 13th Jul
Nobody other than SJVN calls Android as Android Linux.
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Give that that is exactly what it is
wackoae 13th Jul
@mm71 I have no clue why you are b!tch!ng about it.
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But since Android uses the Linux kernel...
John L. Ries 14th Jul
@mm71
..the term is accurate and appropriate.
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Top thing to expect:
wackoae 13th Jul
FAILURE

Unless Amazon creates their own completely separate distro of Android that fixes all the issues that Google continues to ignore, it is doomed for failure ... just like all other Android tablets in the market today.

One thing they are going to have that others won't .... an app store that is is not full of trojans and rebranded pirated apps.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
erictechleeds Updated - 14th Jul
@wackoae talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. Android is more than good enough, and the few bad apps there are a drop in the ocean which a user of amazon tablet can avoid completely if they use the amazon app store.
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I agree
toddybottom 14th Jul
@wackoae
Will it fail to dethrone the iPad? Of course it will.

Will it fail to make a profit? That is the more interesting question. While there is no doubt that Amazon will make no money (or even lose money) on the sale of the hardware, their play here is to make it up in content sales.

My question is: why bother subsidizing your own hardware? Your content is already available on cheap Android tablets (that aren't selling BTW) and it is already available on iPads and iPods and iPhones and slates and netbooks and laptops and PCs. Unless Amazon actually thinks they are going to single handedly increase the number of Amazon customers by releasing yet another cheap Android tablet, this is a waste of time and money (since I see this as never making a profit). Remember, if I'm already an Amazon customer and I buy an Amazon tablet to replace my iPad, Amazon has done nothing other than lose money on the hardware sale.

This has FAILURE written all over it. They'll sell a couple hundred thousand units and it will be gone a year later.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
yarkot 14th Jul
@wackoae - fortunately, Android _is_ open source, and producers of devices are encouraged to contribute back. Whatever Amazon does, they have a strategic advantage at this point: readability, relative stability, good distribution framework, and great battery life. If they expand the playing field they're in, this will not likely fail, not on an open system, with a cooperative attitude... it's not "someone's proprietary" o/s that you cannot make changes to, like WinFon-7 (for example).
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
rodonn 1st Aug
@yarkot *Technically* open source. Try getting the the 3.x source sometime.
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Who cares if it doesn't dethrone the ipad?
johnmckay 14th Jul
@wackoae

So what??? I have an iphone and ipad from work and they stay there. I bought an asus transformer because I like the keyboard, connectivity options (SD, uSD, hdmi). It works great and I plop films in and browse the net very well.

And to all the zealots.... I can honestly say I've never taken the keyboard off yet. Internet and everything benefits from the keyboard not using half the screen. Open your eyes and mind to other options. I have and I'm happy with my options.

You may mention the 3g/moby connection but thats really not an issue. I share my kit with a myfi or tether to my android handset if required (rarely). A myfi and 1 service charge is he future as far as I'm concerned.

There are plenty of good-enough kit available, and loads of cheap devices for the kids/in-car use. Nobody needs to spend all the dosh on an ipad. They will though, and often simply because they dont know any better and think it makes them look cool. It doesn't... makes many look like fools!
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
tonymcs@... 13th Jul
"I?ll say it again the dedicated e-book is on its way to history?s trashcan."

I'll say it once, tablets with a simple phone OS are on their way to the trashcan. The only way Google and Apple will survive Win 8 (outside their fanbois) is putting real Linux and Unix on their tablets. The toy is attractive enough, but it's time to move on to functionality and productivity.
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You seem to be overlooking one very real possibility:
jscott69 14th Jul
@tonymcs@... One obvious and often-mentioned reason for the success of Apple's iPad is that it's NOT what you're proposing: It's NOT a full-fledged PC repackaged into a tablet.

Apart from IT people (like those of us reading ZDNet), most consumers don't want to have to worry about DLL files, registry errors, de-fragging a hard drive, malware or any number of other aspects of PC-dom that average folks consider to be annoying.

And CEOs seem to be growing tired of the immense sums of money they approve each year to maintain technology that really shouldn't require nearly as much maintenance. And as financial pressures continue to force them to look for savings, IT expenditures will only become even more closely scrutinized. Devices that can save a business more money will wind up getting the nod.

So, while I expect Win8 to be very, very cool, I don't expect it to run the iPad out of town. Not any time soon, anyway. Lots of people like the iPad _because_ it's not a Windows PC.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
grahamc2 14th Jul
There is room for both...

I have an iPad and an Amazon Kindle; I use them for completely different reasons.
The iPad is mainly used by my three year old to watch cartoons, via the WIFI connection to my home broadband.

The Kindle is used by me to read books in bed.
I can hold it in one hand and turn the pages with the button on the side. Its very light and the battery last so long, when I take it on holiday I don?t bother bringing the charger.

There is a market for both devices.

http://grahamsblog4444.blogspot.com/
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
erictechleeds 14th Jul
@grahamc2 I agree, if the e-ink readers fall in price (they're not really expensive anyway), they will make great companions with a tablet. Personally when I read I don't want notifications and other stuff interuppting me...
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
ZeroGeeZ0 14th Jul
@grahamc2

I totally agree. I have an iPad and a kindle and love them both. The ereader screen is SSS loop much easier on the eyes. I think every writer who says this stuff should actually use the devices a bit before they prognosticate. He's clueless on this one.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
LoverockDavidson 14th Jul
Since its a tablet, and one running android at that, I don't expect much from it.
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Disagree on trashcan
nemasket.net 14th Jul
When tablets first came out I thought the same thing - that dedicated E-readers were dead. Now that I actually own one, I have totally changed opinion. For pure reading (books, newspapers, docs, etc), an E-Ink E-reader blows away any device table or otherwise that has an LCD screen. Readability in sunlight, power consumption, lack of glare - there is simply no comparison. In fact, I would love to see an E-Ink tablet. I'd trade in the color, video, etc, for the long batter life and readability any day of the week.

The E-ink E-reader is here to stay until a display technology comes along that can match its readability.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
DaveJMo 14th Jul
@nemasket.net I wonder if the author owns an ebook reader or reads books. LCD tablets are a completely different experience. I also don't see the need for elaborate non-reading functionality in an ebook reader. Those are just distractions.

All ebook readers need to remain relevant is continually lowering prices.
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Translation:
fr_gough 14th Jul
Please, Amazon, please, be the one to finally justify my non-rational dislike for all things Apple.
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And the Kindle price will be $500, so why buy a second rate products?
Cynical99 14th Jul
The price will be $500, so buy an iPad instead. If they can't sell the Kindle WiFi version for $200, iPads will continue to pound them into the ground. Latest figures show that Android tablets haven't made enough market share to bother with.

To buy a second rate product with massive security issues (note Google App store) and lacking the cool factor, $199 better be the price point or it'll be another Android failure.

Good luck to Amazon, but Apple will be a tough nut to crack.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
Rabid Howler Monkey 14th Jul
@Cynical99

$199? I would agree if we were discussing Chrome OS-based devices.

But, consider the Nook Color, an Android-based, combined eReader and low-end tablet, at $250. This is a great product for consumers needing an eReader along with some tablet capabilities, but unwilling to spend $500 or more on a premium tablet such as the iPad, Playbook or TouchPad.

Your point is well taken regarding Amazon's Android-based tablet pricing. However, I would choose a price point a little higher, somewhere below $300.

As far as security goes, first, don't muck up Android's user space to the point where updating their customer's firmware takes forever (or doesn't get done) and, second, vet the apps in their app stores as Apple does. And limit the total number of apps available in their app stores so that vetting is achievable and doesn't cost them too much time and money. For those wanting access to Google's Android Market, either buy a premium tablet or root your low-end tablet.

If Amazon and Barnes & Noble play this right, they could own the low-end tablet market. This would translate to increased profits from media sales. Apple has always played the premium market. And in this economy, which is unlikely to improve anytime soon, the low-end market is not a bad place to be.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
skeptic2007 14th Jul
As long as dedicated ebook readers cost a fraction as much as a tablet, weigh a fraction as much and have many times the battery life they will have a market. I used a tablet for ebooks for several months and that convinced me that I needed a 2nd generation Nook for my vacation reading.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
Common+Sense 14th Jul
"With the Kindle Tablet, they?re going to want you to keep your goodies on the Amazon cloud, not on the device itself."

Yeah, that will help me use it as a reader on my >10 hour flights to Asia since I'll be up in the clouds. That IS how it works, right?
Connectivity on the ground is too spotty for me to store everything only in the cloud: it's kind of old fashioned, but I still want my data (also) in my hand.
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"I'm not dead yet"
rb7683@... 14th Jul
I've argued against comparisons between Kindle's and iPad devices due to price. What other product category exists where you can applaud the item which costs 3-4x as much as another and act like it's a fair fight.

I don't think dedicated e-readers will die as quickly as you predict, because they aren't the same device as a table. 1) Price is lower (and needs to drop under the magical $100 for them to become ubiquitous) 2) The display is more suitable to reading text than playing Angry birds. 3) Because of #1, they are smaller, lighter and the batteries last much, much longer.

There's no reason to push for an early demise of the dedicated e-readers. Just add more choice. Amazon should have a device which competes with the Color Nook. It's been successful and they are allowing the competition to lead.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
dimonic 14th Jul
I agree with @newmask.net, I own a Nook color, and a Kobo (first gen), and at night I curl up with the kobo and its e-ink. For straight up reading, e-ink is far superior. Easier on the eyes, less tiring, the device is much lighter, lasts longer etc etc.

I don't see an active display displacing my kobo for reading anytime soon.
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unreadable and un-detachable? no thanks
jelabarre 14th Jul
> I?ve said it before; I?ll say it again the dedicated e-book
> is on its way to history?s trashcan.

So those of us who would like to read books on a portable device are cursed to going blind trying to read on an LCD display? And will be cursed with being unable to see them in sunlight? Yeah, thanks for nothing, guys. If I want to read a book, I want e-ink.

Additionally: with the form factors on tablets, it's about time they started including ***FULL SIZE*** SD/MMC card readers. Micro-SD is completely useless if you want to use it for a removable media format. A storage format that's smaller than my pinkie fingernail *WILL* get lost in short time. Not *may* get lost, but absolutely will get lost. Heck, my daughter misplaces the cartridges for her Leapster Explorer, and those are bigger than a full-size SD/MMC.

Dependence on online content???? Yeah, that's why I don't have a "smartphone" either. I want something that can functionally replace my offline-usable PalmOS device (not WebOS, PalmOS, like the Clie SJ22). Otherwise I can stick with a used laptop, thank you very much.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
srebmob@... 15th Jul
Those who think that tablets will replace good e-readers like Kindle don't understand that this is a totally different audience with different interests. A lot of the Kindle users I know have zero interest in owning a tablet of any kind. They just want to read their books.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
garycoryer@... 16th Jul
Dependancy on the cloud is a BIG drawback to anyone who moves around much. Mobile network coverage is no where near complete enough in many areas of the country to make the cloud practical.
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I wonder...
dave@... 22nd Jul
.... how many of the haters have actually used an Android tablet? I've had one for six months, and I love it. It was my only computing device, aside from my smartphone, on a recent vacation, and it was actually more useful than a laptop, as it's a far more usable eBook reader and video player, not to mention all-day battery life.

The one big problem with most tablets, solved by the Kindle and my tablet (Notion Ink Adam with PQ screen).. you can't seem them in bright sunlight. The whole point of a tablet is de-tethering from your power sources... it should be usable outdoors. And an eBook reader should function just about anywhere a book might... like on the beach. Otherwise, it fails... and that means you too, iPad.

I'll admit most Android 2.2 tablets are not well thought out enough for average users. As a computer expert, I had little trouble hacking a few things in place to make the NI tablet pretty nice. Shame the company couldn't have done this out of the box, but they do seem to be trying. This is less true of Android 3.1 tablets, and not true at all about the Samsung 2.x tablets. I bought my son one recently (he asked for Android over Apple, and specifically, a 7" tablet) and the Samsung was perfectly outfitted for consumer use, including both Android Market and a Samsung App Store... even on the Wifi version.

In the grand scheme of Android, official tablets have only existed since February. At the same point along the Android phone timeline, many pundits were laughing at Android.. now there are over half a million new activations every day. The tablet software may still need some tweaking, but it's much better than most of the haters, who've never even used a Galaxy Pad or an updated Xoom, would like to admit.
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I claim Amazon CAN Compete
dave@... 22nd Jul
Amazon may well be the thing in the tablet world that Apple fears the most.

It's very clear that the whole point of the iPad 2 was "better eReader". They slimmed it down, not to eReader size, but as thin as many. The iPad 2 doesn't have a case, it has a "cover"... like a book. Apple's big discussion at the launch, even before they announced the iPad 2, was how well the iBook market was.

The key here: this is a brand new revenue source for Apple. And another lock-in... once you have an iBook, you have to read it on an iOS product, or in iTunes. Apple loves the lock-ins... it forces brand loyalty on devices.

But enter Amazon. They are the most successful eBook company already. They also have all the other infrastructure bits that Apple has: apps, music, video, etc. And they've proven their ability to get very usable, in-house products to market, like the Kindle. They have volume, and their own design center (Lab 126... right in Apple's back yard, in fact).

As with Android phones, you don't need to outsell any single Apple product to "beat" Apple. One or two really, really good Android phones, like my Droid 1, and it was over in six months for Apple's dominance of the smart phone market. The same factors can apply to the tablet market.

This probably doesn't matter as much to Apple as people think, though. They're all about maximizing profits, not maximizing volume. The Mac, the iPhone, and yes, even the iPad are high priced items, and Apple's the world's most successful premium brand. They're not going to cut price any time soon to make up volume. In come places, they can't.

For example, the Mac. A recent report claimed that Apple makes 5x as much profit on every Mac as a company like HP or Dell typically makes on a similar personal computer. Apple's got a 5% share of the market. If they lowered price to match HP (my HP laptop cost $1280 five years ago, a nearly identical MacBook Pro ran $2999), they'd have to push the MacOS into a 25% share of the PC market. That's never going to happen.

On the iOS side of things, Apple's doing so well, they're kind of up against a wall. They have to design an item that can sustain a 10-20 million unit volume per quarter. That's what I'd call a "high class problem", sure... but it also explains why the iPad 2 has such hideous cameras -- they were cheap, and available. A company with lesser aspirations, or several different models in the market, can offer at least one with much better performance. Going to even higher volumes will happen in time, but for now, there's nothing pushing them to lower the price.
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RE: Five Things to expect from the Amazon Android Kindle tablet
czorrilla 21st Aug
@dave@...

Excellent post!! Nothing else to say after that.

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