14 DAY TRIAL // This week was a very busy week for Amazon, that pushed out a bunch of new products and updated versions of current devices.
Accused of neglecting its Kindle business as of late, Amazon struck back with a lot of fresh stuff. For starters, the retail giant pushed out a new Kindle, the Voyage eReader, which arrives with touch sensors for turning pages.
In an interesting twist, Amazon seems to be pushing towards the homogenization of its tablet and smartphone business under the Fire name.
The Kindle moniker will still be used for the company’s eReaders and high-end set of tablets, the HDX family.
Kindles will remain the company's base
Anyway, I gave you this quick tour of what happened this past week to make a point. After waiting more than a year to do anything about its Kindles, the company has finally come to its senses.
After the whole Amazon Kindle Fire phone fiasco, the retail giant seems to have understood that most of its business relies on Kindles.
But the tech maker is far from abandoning its mobile ambitions, hence its new tactic of uniting the budget tablet and smartphone business under the Fire banner, which is a tad ironic if you ask me.
After all, the device acts and looks like a smallish version of a Kindle Fire tablet, with an intense focus on the unique 3D capabilities.
Albeit being a special orchid, the smartphone turned out to be a total fiasco, and after a few months trying to market it for $200 / €156, Amazon lowered the prices drastically, so the handset can now be purchased for only 99 cents from AT&T.
Amazon's future rumored products aren't really special
As for Amazon’s other products, nothing else impresses that much. The Fire TV has been relatively well received by customers, but the truth is that the set doesn’t offer anything that non-Prime affiliates can’t get from another place.
The company is reportedly trying to breach into other product areas, and at some point we heard Amazon was working on a device that could project a computer image on any surface. But that’s just something akin to a pico-projector.
What about a speech controlled speaker, would that manage to impress the masses? Not that much, since such a device is just a combination of Siri and Jambox. Maybe a Squarte-like service? I’m not sure that we need a Square clone right now with Amazon’s logo plastered on top.
Amazon might have realized all these things, so it finally decided to give the Kindle family the revamp that was highly anticipated.
The company unleashed a new version of the its own Fire OS, which is called Sangria and is based on Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box.
It also made an entry in the children’s market, by rolling out the Fire HD Kids Edition tablets that come with a bumped case and child friendly content.
Last but not least, the tech giant has unveiled its cheapest and smallest tablet to date, the Fire HD 6, which takes advantage of Sangria and sells for a super affordable price, so yes I suspect that it will become quite popular with consumers.