Amazon to tackle entry-level tablet market with $50 model

Shawn Knight

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Amazon hasn’t exactly set the world ablaze with its Fire-branded mobile devices. The company’s Fire Phone was a commercial flop of colossal proportions, a failure that was directly related to the laying off of dozens of hardware engineers late last month.

Despite the setbacks, Amazon isn’t giving up on its hardware ambitions. Instead, Jeff Bezos and crew are simply planning to target a different market segment.

Sources familiar with the matter tell The Wall Street Journal that Amazon is preparing to launch a 6-inch tablet at a price point of just $50. At that price, it would be one of the cheapest tablets on the market and is half of what it currently charges for its Fire HD tablet with the same size display.

To get to that price point, Amazon will of course have to make some sacrifices in the hardware department. Sources say, for example, that the tablet will have a mono speaker rather than stereo. As the company has demonstrated in the past, it has no qualms with razor-thin margins on its hardware as it hopes to make most of its money by selling software and media.

Amazon’s cheapest tablet as of writing is the aforementioned 6-inch Fire HD which sells for $99 via an ad-supported model or $114 ad-free.

The budget-minded slate is expected to arrive in time for the lucrative holiday buying season, we’re told.

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Team with Ubuntu is a better play. They have the hardware and the cloud support, Ubuntu have the software.
 
One nice thing about a fire tablet, is if you have an amazon prime membership, you can use the lending library to read lots of e-books for free, which you can't do with the kindle app on a non amazon tablet.
 
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