The Kindle Fire is firing up competition in the tablet market. The next Kindle Fire model reportedly will be 8.9 inches and offer a high resolution touchscreen. Amazon reduced the price of refurbished Kindle Fire tablet. If you already own a Kindle Fire you can update your Kindle Fire software.
The Kindle Fire update 6.3 includes book excerpt social media sharing, supplemental book material, personal document cloud storage, movie rentals time start at viewing, discounted digital textbooks, and faster Wi-Fi connections after sleep mode. It does not correct the problem parents had with one-click buying by children.
This year, reportedly, Amazon plans to introduce another low-end 7” model (resolution of 1024x600), medium- to high-end 7” model (1280x800), and high-end 8.9” (1920x1200).A Taiwan publication reported that Amazon has supplied over five million Kindle Fire tablets, already.
The $139.99 Kindle Fire refurbished deal at Amazon.com sold-out earlier today. It however is good indication that Amazon may reduce the price again in the future.
Although everyone seems to want to buy an iPad, the highest barrier to buying is price. The new iPad's lowest prices is $499.99 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and $399 for the lowest iPad 2 model. There is a good reason for the pricing, most 10" tablets cost over $300 to make in materials alone.
The first Kindle Fire sells for more that it costs to make. Amazon may be trying to cut costs by making the next model 8.9". When the HP TouchPad went below $200 during the fire sale it sold-out. The best deal we can find for a 10-incher is the 32 GB HP TouchPad refurbished deal for $219 at PCConnectionExpress (see TouchPad benchmark tests).
Amazon makes a profit from media sales, not just the sale of the tablets.
The Kindle Fire is not without problems. The Kindle Fire was hottest selling and most-wished-for item on Amazon and named the most-gifted-promoted tablet by Wireless and Mobile News. Kindle Fire sales are predicted to beat all other tablets in 2012.