By now most tech news readers know that Amazon’s announcing their new Kindle tablet at an event tomorrow. There have also been reports that the Android tablet will be called the Kindle Fire. However, did you know that the update to the Kindle Fire may be released as early as Q1 2012? According to Ryan Block and gdgt.com, his sources have indicated that this may be the case.
The initial report from MG Siegler about the Kindle tablet described it as very similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook. Well, apparently this is because Amazon outsourced the hardware manufacturing to Quanta, the ODM that made the Playbook. Amazon did this to get the Kindle tablet out as quickly as possible for the holiday shopping season, since they had experienced delays during the process of creating it. Instead of delaying further, Amazon supposedly is using this first version of the Kindle tablet as a stopgap device ahead of the release of the “real” tablet they wanted to release.
If Amazon does this, the timing would be rather quick. If the tablet is announced tomorrow, released in November, and version 2.0 comes out around the end of Q1 next year, that’s only a gap of 4 months between releases. Manufacturers have released updates to their products in quick succession, but they’ve usually been met with the ire of the consumers who just bought the older version of the device! It doesn’t make sense for Amazon to do this, especially since they seem to be aiming their tablet at e-book readers, in the same vein as the Barnes and Noble NOOK Color. These buyers will not necessarily be looking for a cutting edge device with the latest version of Android, and all the bells and whistles. Buyers of the first Kindle tablet will probably be as happy as current Barnes and Noble NOOK Color owners are with their purchase.
So why not wait at least until Q2 or Q3 for an update to the Kindle tablet? Let the Kindle tablet breathe, see where customer experience could be improved, and then release version 2.0. Even though other tablet manufacturers like Lenovo are releasing their own inexpensive Android tablets, Amazon shouldn’t be (and probably isn’t) concerned with that side of the Android tablet market. As ever, all of the rumors reach a frenzy as the actual announcement gets closer, so hopefully by tomorrow, a big part of the mystery will be solved.
Via gdgt
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