Amazon’s Secret: The Tablet that Could Change Everything

Thus far in the tablet industry, Apple’s iPad has been the standard-bearer. Its price (around $500 or so) is still competitive relative to other tablets, and the sales numbers suggest that even the cheaper tablets have not been able to make a major dent in Apple’s business.

Now there’s whispering that suggests the reign of the iPad as the “entry-level” tablet could soon be at an end, thanks to an unlikely entry into the market:  Amazon.com. Amazon, of course, is a giant name with a good reputation for putting out its own products after the success of the Kindle, an e-reader that, while effective and wildly popular, is definitively not a tablet.

TechCrunch’s MG Sigler, however, has personally used the new Amazon touch-screen tablet and confirms that is is an entirely different species from the Kindle we’ve all grown to know and love. Says Sigler:

Again, the device is a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive touch screen. It is multi-touch, but from what I saw, I believe the reports that it relies on a two-finger multi-touch (instead of 10-finger, like the iPad uses) are accurate. This will be the first Kindle with a full-color screen. And yes, it is back-lit. There is no e-ink to be found anywhere on this device.

What’s truly interesting about the Amazon tablet (which runs Android, and is believed to be a part of the Kindle series) is its price: $250. Needless to say, that’s a price that drastically changes precedent in the tablet market, and will compete with the Nook Color of Barnes and Noble.

When you consider how easily it will be to access just about every aspect of Amazon’s marketplace from one-touch buttons, the implications on both e-Readers and tablets become so clear, it’s almost as if they’re back-lit.

Amazon Kindle

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