14 DAY TRIAL // It has been quite a while since we heard anything new and exciting coming out of Amazon, hardware-wise. To be fair, the electronics giant hasn’t been all that successful in selling high-end products. Just look at its failed Fire Phone experiment.
Amazon became an important player in the mobile thanks to its affordable tablets and eBook readers. But when it attempted to sell a high-end, fancy 3D phone, customers just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
According to a new report coming out of the Wall Street Journal, Amazon has apparently realized that its strength comes from affordable products, so it is working on delivering a super budget slate with a 6-inch display that will be ready just in time for the holiday season. The rumored tablet will cost as low as $50 / €45.
Amazon’s cheapest tablet to date is the 6-inch Fire HD tablet, which sells at double the price, while the company’s most affordable Kindle eReader can be purchased for $79 / €70. So with the upcoming tablet, Amazon is looking to push the bar even lower.
Expect new tablets from Amazon towards the end of the year
The low-end tablet market is a place where a lot of junk tends to appear. But with Amazon making an entry in it, we should soon see some decent devices available for purchase. The WSJ report suggests that these will test the limits of cost saving, as the device won’t even be getting the stereo speaker treatment.
But there’s another way Amazon could end up making the tablet so cheap, without having to kill all the decent features a slate could hope to have. Amazon’s current bunch is so affordable due to lock screen ads, so Amazon could be expanding ads in order for them to reach the $50 / €45 mark.
The report also mentions that Amazon will also unveil 8-inch and 10-inch tablets later this year. We are not given any details about their specifications, but hopefully, they will have a thing or two in common with the company’s HDX bunch, which are among the best affordable slates one can hope to find on the market.