On Sept. 6, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stood in front of a packed house and fired his latest shot across the bow of Apple’s battleship. It was approximately one year earlier that Amazon surprised the industry with the announcement of the
Kindle Fire, a low-cost tablet that had the benefit of Amazon’s vaunted collection of content and applications. With its $199 price tag, the Kindle Fire was an immediate hit, quickly establishing Amazon as a player in consumer electronics space.
Fast forward one year, and Amazon is not only introducing a new version of the Kindle Fire, but three other tablets meant to further establish the company as a viable competitor to Apple’s iPad family and Google’s foray into the tablet space,
Nexus 7.[Get a 10% discount on ARM TechCon 2012 conference passes by using promo code EDIT. Click here to learn about the show and register.]The first announcement came in the form of a new Kindle Fire featuring a beefed up processor but much of the same in terms of quality and performance. What was more intriguing was Amazon’s next announcement: a new family of tablets called the Kindle Fire HD. With the creation of the Kindle Fire HD, Amazon is taking the Apple iPad head on, not only with the introduction of a 7-inch tablet, but also an 8.9-inch model that will rival the 10.1-inch iPad.
The Kindle Fire HD features a 1920 x 1200 high-resolution display, dual speakers, a front-facing HD camera and HDMI out capability. The Kindle Fire HD is also the first tablet to be released featuring MIMO technology. Amazon claims MIMO, with its dual-bands (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) makes the tablet 41 percent more efficient at W-iFi connectivity.
Click on image to enlarge.Amazon didn’t stop there, however. The company rolled out an LTE version of the Kindle Fire HD, a move that was not that surprising considering that many tablets have already made the move to the faster 4G network. The corresponding data plan from AT&T gives consumers 32 GB of cloud storage and 250 MB of data per month for $50…per year. Such an offering is unprecedented by any network carrier, and it remains to be seen what effect this will have on other manufacturers and the agreements they make with cellular providers in the U.S.
The LTE model will be released in November. So, for now, we’ll take a closer look inside the Kindle Fire HD 7-inch tablet.