A while ago, Amazon was rumored to be preparing an 8.9 inch tablet to follow-up the well selling 7 inch Kindle Fire. Now, it appears that those rumors were not true, as the new device is expected to be a 10.1 inch unit. It’s a pretty strange choice since companies that so far made big tablets are focused on smaller models.
We’ve got Motorola, that moved from the 10 inch Xoom to a 8.2 inch tablet, Apple that’s rumored to be making a 7.85 inch iPad and ASUS supposedly preparing the cheap Nexus 7 inch tablet. Now, Amazon does the opposite thing and it’s actually preparing a bigger slate. The new 10.1 inch Kindle Fire is supposed to debut in Q3, if rumors are in fact true. Sources say that Amazon expects to ship 30-40 million tablets this year alone. It will be interesting to see if this model ends up being a quad core tablet, since when the first Kindle Fire was launched everyone was expecting both a dual core and quad core slate.
Also, I wonder what the OS on it will look like. It will probably be Android 4.0 all wrapped up in the Amazon experience and providing revenue via the Amazon services and ads. The price will probably be close to the original Kindle Fire’s price, so maybe $200, maybe $250 or so.
