Amazon is going to refresh their entire Kindle lineup according to C|Net. They say that the Kindle electronic ink readers are going to get updated, which is great for those of you who want single purpose device, but more importantly the Kindle Fire tablet is also set to be replaced. We don’t know much about the Kindle Fire II (completely made up name), but rumors from earlier this year sugget that it might be bigger than the current 7 inch model, yet smaller than the 9.6 inch iPad. So when are we going to see these devices? July 31st, a little less than 5 weeks from now.
The more important question is what’s Amazon going to do to make their cheap tablet competitive against the tablet that Google is supposedly going to introduce today? In case you’ve been living under a rock, it’s widely believed that Google has contracted ASUS to build a 7 inch Nexus tablet that has an NVIDIA Tegra 3 chip inside; it’s supposed to cost just $199. We’re going to see said tablet at Google I/O, an event that’s due to kick off in a little over five hours as of the time this article was published.
Comparing a future tablet from Amazon we know nothing about to a future tablet from Google that we know nothing about would be an incredible way to waste everyone’s time, so let’s not do that. Instead, let’s focus on what Amazon offers that Google doesn’t: Amazon Prime. That $79 per year service gives Amazon members not only free two day shipping, but also them access to a huge library of movies and television shows that can be streamed at no additional cost. Google sells music and video through their Play Store, but let’s be serious, who ever uses the Play Store for anything other than apps? Amazon’s content store works on various devices too, something that Google has yet to figure out how to implement.