Amazon Media Event Set for September 28th, Tablet Announcement Expected
As noted by AllThingsD and This is my next, Amazon has just sent out invitations for a media event scheduled for next Wednesday, September 28th. The invitation is silent on what the topic of the event will be, but the company is widely expected to introduce its own low-cost Android tablet.
Reports from earlier this year indicated that Amazon was planning to launch a 9-inch Android tablet before October, but it appears that Amazon's first offering may in fact be a 7-inch tablet. TechCrunch's MG Siegler spent some hands-on time with the device, noting that Amazon has basically forked Android to create its own look tightly integrated with Kindle and other Amazon offerings.
Simply put: it looks nothing like the Android you’re used to seeing.
The interface is all Amazon and Kindle. It’s black, dark blue, and a bunch of orange. The main screen is a carousel that looks like Cover Flow in iTunes which displays all the content you have on the device. This includes books, apps, movies, etc.
[...]
But the key for Amazon is just how deeply integrated all of their services are. Amazon’s content store is always just one click away. The book reader is a Kindle app (which looks similar to how it does on Android and iOS now). The music player is Amazon’s Cloud Player. The movie player is Amazon’s Instant Video player. The app store is Amazon’s Android Appstore.
Perhaps most notably, Amazon is said to be targeting a $250 price point for the device, half that of Apple's entry-level iPad.
Numerous iPad competitors have been introduced over the past 12-15 months, with a number of them being hailed as the biggest challenge to Apple's dominance before failing to gain customer acceptance. But Amazon's ability to integrate its extensive content offerings with a low-cost tablet device has sparked renewed speculation that Apple may finally face a strong challenge in the tablet market.
Popular Stories
Apple will adopt the same rear chassis manufacturing process for the iPhone SE 4 that it is using for the upcoming standard iPhone 16, claims a new rumor coming out of China. According to the Weibo-based leaker "Fixed Focus Digital," the backplate manufacturing process for the iPhone SE 4 is "exactly the same" as the standard model in Apple's upcoming iPhone 16 lineup, which is expected to...
Key details about the overall specifications of the iPhone 17 lineup have been shared by the leaker known as "Ice Universe," clarifying several important aspects of next year's devices. Reports in recent months have converged in agreement that Apple will discontinue the "Plus" iPhone model in 2025 while introducing an all-new iPhone 17 "Slim" model as an even more high-end option sitting...
Apple typically releases its new iPhone series around mid-September, which means we are about two months out from the launch of the iPhone 16. Like the iPhone 15 series, this year's lineup is expected to stick with four models – iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max – although there are plenty of design differences and new features to take into account. To bring ...
Apple is scaling back its Hollywood spending after investing over $20 billion in original programming with limited success, Bloomberg reports. This shift comes after the streaming service, which launched in 2019, struggled to capture a significant share of the market, accounting for only 0.2% of TV viewership in the U.S., compared to Netflix's 8%. Despite heavy investment, critical acclaim,...
Last Friday, a major CrowdStrike outage impacted PCs running Microsoft Windows, causing worldwide issues affecting airlines, retailers, banks, hospitals, rail networks, and more. Computers were stuck in continuous recovery loops, rendering them unusable. The failure was caused by an update to the CrowdStrike Falcon antivirus software that auto-installed on Windows 10 PCs, but Mac and Linux...
