Amazon ready to set Fire to tablet industry

In another scoop, TechCrunch is reporting that Amazon's long-rumored tablet will be unveiled on Wednesday morning.  And the name of the Amazon tablet will be the Kindle Fire. Yes, it's an odd name, but then again so was iPad.

The press conference will be in New York City on Wednesday morning and it's thought that Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos will finally show off the Amazon Kindle Fire. (Sounds very Microsoft-like doesn’t it?)

If the tablet rumors hold up, it should be a seven-inch tablet that looks similar to the lackluster BlackBerry PlayBook. The tablet was designed by Quanta, who also designed the aforementioned PlayBook. So, it wouldn't be inconceivable that the tablets may resemble each other.

Where Amazon sets itself apart from RIM is on the software side.  A proprietary port of Android is expected to be the OS, complete with Amazon's Appstore, their cloud storage for music and their Prime service, now with over 11,000 titles available to be streamed for free.  Unfortunately, it looks like Amazon won’t be including an email client, something that RIM was mocked for leaving out of their tablet.  Amazon will have the Appstore, which does have email clients available to download.

The price of the Kindle Fire should come in at under $300 and may even be set at around $250.  The success of this tablet will depend a lot on the marketing prowess of Amazon and how well it is received on Wednesday.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say this tablet sells better than any other Android tablet, but not enough to be a breakaway hit.

 [SOURCE]