For months, a $99 7 inch tablet has been rumored, but has never been delivered. Now, the latest speculation has Amazon ready to deliver a $99 7 inch Amazon Kindle Fire HD. The tablet would offer resolution of 1280 x 600 which improves upon the 1024 x 600 resolution on the most current 7 inch Amazon device. In addition to that tablet, Amazon produces an 8.9 inch version of the Kindle Fire with a 1280 x 600 panel. Using the same resolution on a smaller screen should improve the pixel density on the rumored model. The tablet is expected to be powered by a TI OMAP processor
The Amazon Kindle Fire 2 introduced by Jeff Bezos
Earlier this month, Amazon cut the price of the Wi-Fi only Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 from $299 to $269 while the LTE version was slashed by $100 to $399. The lowest priced slate in Amazon's line up is the original Amazon Kindle Fire priced at $159 while the Amazon Kindle Fire 2 is priced at $199. For the company to deliver a $99 tablet with specs that are improved would be quite a feat for Amazon.
And perhaps delivering a 7 inch sub-$100 tablet is too much to expect, even for the company credited with starting the low -priced 7 inch Android tablet niche. The company has denied the report of a $99 tablet saying that it has already "hit the lowest price points possible for that hardware." But according to IDC Research Director Tom Mainelli, the infrastructure is in place to produce a $99 tablet.
Amazon sells its tablets for breakeven and makes its money by selling content, apps and cloud based storage to its customers. No Google apps or services are on the devices even though they run on the Android OS.
"If they can sell the product at roughly what it costs to build, that fits their long-term vision to make money selling you content on that device. It’s entirely possible – physically possible – to create a device that costs $99, particularly at the scale that Amazon would do it."-Tom Mainelli, Research Director, IDC
Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
Recommended Stories
Loading Comments...
COMMENT
All comments need to comply with our
Community Guidelines
Phonearena comments rules
A discussion is a place, where people can voice their opinion, no matter if it
is positive, neutral or negative. However, when posting, one must stay true to the topic, and not just share some
random thoughts, which are not directly related to the matter.
Things that are NOT allowed:
Off-topic talk - you must stick to the subject of discussion
Offensive, hate speech - if you want to say something, say it politely
Spam/Advertisements - these posts are deleted
Multiple accounts - one person can have only one account
Impersonations and offensive nicknames - these accounts get banned
Moderation is done by humans. We try to be as objective as possible and moderate with zero bias. If you think a
post should be moderated - please, report it.
Have a question about the rules or why you have been moderated/limited/banned? Please,
contact us.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: