Rumor has it that Amazon is going to announce the second generation Kindle Fire on the last day of this month. For those of you who don’t know what the Kindle Fire is, it’s a $199 7 inch tablet that runs a highly customized version of Google’s Android operating system. Many people consider the recently announced $199 Nexus 7 to be Google’s response to the Fire, but anyway, back to the second generation Fire. We don’t know anything about it other than that it’s going to come in the same 7 inch form factor and it’ll also likely have the same $199 price tag. According to Unwired View, Amazon has already placed an order for 2 million of these second gen Kindle Fires with Quanta. Said Fire II units are scheduled to be delivered in early August.
The important question here is what can Amazon possibly do to make the new Fire more appealing than the Nexus 7? Besides shoving a cellular radio inside, there’s nothing they can really offer, or is there? What many people fail to remember is that Amazon also has a service called Prime. It costs $80 per year and it gives you unlimited streaming of many movies and television shows. You also get free two day shipping should you want to buy something from Amazon’s massive online store. Is Prime enough to make people turn away from pure Android 4.1 Jelly Bean though? That’s something the market has to answer.
To complicate matters even further, yesterday we filed a report that said Apple is going to release a 7.85 inch iPad later this year. It’s a rumor we’ve been tracking for months, but now that Bloomberg is reporting it … it’s safe to say that’s it’s not BS anymore. It’s real. Said iPad mini is supposed to cost between $249 and $299, which is more expensive than the Fire or Nexus 7, but then again it’s an iPad.