Amazone is holding a major press event tomorrow morning and all signs point to it finally unveiling the much-rumored Amazon tablet, which will be based on a customized version of Android and may finally bring some real competition to the Apple iPad.
TechCrunch has actually played with at least a developer version and it says the device will be called the Kindle Fire. I’m not in love with that name but it makes sense for Amazone to keep the uber-popular Kindle name because many signs indicate that this may be more of a competitor to the Nook Color than the iPad.
The Amazon Fire (I guess we’ll call it that until we know the real name) is expected to have a 7-inch screen, be similar in look and feel to the BlackBerry PlayBook and it will have a highly-customized version of Android – supposedly, an end user wouldn’t even know that Google’s OS is underneath. Don’t look for Google services or the Android Market to be on this thing, as Amazon is expected to make all of its services front and center with this tablet.
While some of you may miss Google Maps and other things, Amazon has quietly built up a host of services which could make the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet formidable. It can preload its own music store, application store, video on demand service, Kindle e-reading service and more in a smooth user interface.
Amazon has kept a relatively tight lid on this thing other than the TechCrunch leaks but we still haven’t seen it in action yet. That will change tomorrow friends and you can be sure we’ll be live-blogging the action around 7 a.m. PST. Join us for the fun and let us know what you’re expecting.