Thursday, July 5, 2012

Kindle News. China Times story on Kindle Fire 2 order by Amazon

China Times reports Kindle Fire 2 may ship on August 7

A number of news sites are citing the China Times story (on a possible Kindle Fire 2 shipping date), which is displayed in Chinese and therefore not easily read by most of us, and so I'm posting a primitive machine-translation-to-English version of the news article via Google's translation capability.  (Thanks to thedroidguy.com for providing the link to the Chinese version).

Although one can't trust the accuracy of an automated machine-transation, this gives us an idea of what was said, on a more basic level.  The really tortured translations can be fun to read as almost impossible puzzles of their own.

  According to the China Times, factory components began shipping in heavy volume in June, to Taiwan-based Quanta for the coming new Kindle Fire tablet, and it's expected that "the first wave of shipments of about 200 million units" [of the new Kindle Fire] ... "may fall on 7 August"  to counter the impact of the Google Nexus 7.

  The newspaper  echos Digitimes' prediction that the targeted launch date (announcement date) of the new device is the end of July (July 31) and the idea is "to stimulate a new wave of buying." The quoted sections are of the Google translation of the story, not literally what China Times said.

  Quanta made the first Kindle Fire and is OEM panel factory for Sony and RIM, which makes sense since the original Kindle Fire's frame, and somewhat more, was based on RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook.

  China Times's  Zhan Zixian names TPK and XIN as responsible for the 'touch part,' and some changes expected include the previously mentioned metal casing instead of a plastic one, while there is also mention of a new battery, which would be required for a more powerful unit that is expected.

  It fleetingly mentions the rumors of the 8.9" and 10" models but says nothing concrete about any of that, only that the Kindle Fire is getting fast-tracked and will be $199 as before.

  Amazon would do well to have a minimum 16 gigs of storage on this one (even B&N was able to do that LAST year while Google's Nexus is only 8 gigs) -- and if Amazon can swing the SD card slot, they have nothing to fear from the Nexus.  Bluetooth would be an enormous plus so that we can add a physical keyboard.

  At the very least, they should provide adapters for an SD card reader and USB device as Apple and Samsung do.   But built-in? That would be audacious (if they're worried about collectors or hoarders of other-sourced fare not buying from Amazon) and would make all the difference.  They should know their crowd is interested in Amazon's media offerings and so of course should (continue to) make the latter attractive in price.

Google and the UK
There are a lot of news articles today about the Nexus not giving access in the UK to music, tv shows, magazines, and even Google Play apps.

8.9" Kindle tablet?
  I saw two stories today saying the latest rumor is of an 8.9" tablet, but it probably came from seeing a mention of an 8.9" one as a later possibility in the China Times's story.

  Also, while Amazon has given Quanta an order for, the story says, 2 million new Kindle Fires, Amazon hasn't given Quanta an estimate for any second batch of shipments.

  A red flag.  China Times mentions "increasing the camera lens to improve screen resolution" -- the original Kindle Fire has no camera lens to improve.  However, it's anticipated that the 2nd Kindle Fire's display will have increased screen resolution.  Seeing that the Nexus does have a display of 1280x800, there'll be pressure on Amazon to match that.




Current Kindle Models for reference, plus free-ebook search links
US:
Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199
Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109
Kindle Touch, WiFi
- $99/$139
Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web
Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web
UK:
Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89
Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109
Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169
Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB
OTHER International
Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109
Kindle Touch WiFi - $139
Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

1 comment:

  1. I love my Kindle so if they do make the second one id love to buy it as well :)

    ReplyDelete

NOTE: TO AVOID SPAM being posted instantly, this blog uses the blogger.com "DELAY" feature.

Am often away much of the day, and postings won't show up right away. Posts done to use referrer-links may never show up.

Usually, am online enough to release comments within a day though, so the hard-to-read match-text tests for commenting won't be needed this way.

Feedback and questions are welcome. Thanks for participating.

Technical Problems?
If you're having problems leaving a Comment, Google's blogger-help asks that you clear the 'blogger.com' cookies on your browser's Tools or Options menu bar and that will fix the Comment-box problems (until they have a permanent fix).

IF that doesn't work either, then UNcheck the "keep me signed in" box -- Google-help says that should allow your comment to post (it's a workaround to a current bug).
Apologies for the problems.

TIP: There's a size limit. If longer than 3500 characters or so, in a text editor, make two posts out of it.

[Valid RSS]