What would you say if Amazon lowered the price on their Kindle Fire tablets, to just $149? I’d say “Wow! That’s a 25% discount! And it’ll probably help the tablets attract a huge, new audience…” Well, Amazon actually is considering a new $149 price-tag for the Kindle Fire. At least, according to a rumor that’s being reported on several technology blogs…
Digitimes cites sources “from the upstream supply chain” who expect Amazon to release a new Kindle Fire tablet in July with a higher screen resolution (1280 x 800). And since the new tablets will cost $199, Amazon will offer a discount on the earlier models (which have a slightly lower screen resolution of 1024 x 600). According to Digitimes, Amazon sold less than 800,000 Kindle Fire tablets in the first three months of 2012, after racking up sales of close to 5 million when it was first launched at the end of 2011. So Amazon’s hoping to grow the user base for the Kindle Fire by offering a big drop in the price!
That might help Amazon’s tablet fight off some new competitors, according to a technology blog at ZDNet. They noted that Google may even be planning to release a tablet of their own soon to compete with the Kindle Fire, and in May they cited another threat after Apple reduced the price of an iPad 2 to just $399. To remain competitive, Amazon may soon lower the price of the Kindle Fire to just $149. “The strategy is straight out of Apple’s playbook: dropping the price of the previous generation’s hardware in order to expand its market share. It worked with the iPod and iPhone…”
Of course, Amazon hasn’t forgotten their other Kindles, and the “upstream sources” also shared their thoughts about the next generation of devices. Later this year, they expect Amazon to release some brand new versions of the black-and-white Kindle e-readers too, possibly in different sizes. And towards the end of this year, they even expect Amazon to release a larger Kindle Fire, with a 10.1-inch screen.
So if you’re shopping for a new Kindle this year, it looks like Amazon will have some exciting announcements for you soon!