With all the news and rumors zipping around about new Apple products, Samsung’s next phone, and other tech-related goodies, there hasn’t been a lot of attention paid lately to the top Android tablet on the market: Amazon’s Kindle Fire. With Amazon’s popular tablet having just passed the six month mark since its release (on November 15th, 2011), people are starting to wonder what might be next from Amazon.
A report from DigiTimes today suggests that a 10.1-inch version of the tablet might be on its way. While earlier rumors had suggested that Amazon might launch an 8.9-inch version alongside the current 7-inch model. This rumored 10.1-inch tablet, which would be targeted at Apple’s iPad, would replace the 8.9-inch model. DigiTimes’s “industry sources” also said that they expect Amazon’s orders of Kindle Fires to start increasing toward the end of the second quarter and beginning of the third.
While Amazon certainly wants to compete with the iPad, and other larger tablets, it seems unlikely that they’ll move all the way up to a 10.1-inch model. After all, the Kindle started out as a dedicated e-reader, and grew into the tablet market. It seems unlikely that a tablet that got its start from a line of e-readers could fare quite as well in the larger tablet market. It’s also worth noting that the source for this information is DigiTimes, a publication with a less-than-stellar record for accuracy in such matters.
On the other hand, there are fewer large tablets in the Android market as a whole. If Amazon expands the Kindle Fire into that segment of the market as well, its current popularity is bound to give it a significant advantage over those tablet makers that are already in the space.
At any rate, we’re not likely to see the launch of a new Kindle for awhile yet, assuming Amazon follows anything like a yearly schedule. So for now we’ll have to just keep waiting and watching.