Report claims no bigger Kindle Fire coming

When Amazon announced the Kindle Fire last year, it was probably the only tablet to take on the iPad and eat away at some of its market share despite its diminutive form factor. It has been almost a year since it was announced and the entire globe is preparing for a refreshed version of this tablet. A recent report indicated that Amazon will be hosting an event on the 6th of September to showcase their upcoming products and the highlight of this event is expected to be the follow up to the Kindle Fire. Prior to this report, there had been rumours floating around that Amazon would launch a tablet with a larger form factor that will go head to head with the iPad. But a recent report by CNET indicates that this will not be the case and instead two 7-inch tablets would be launched.

Amazon Kindle 2 coming soon

The CNET authors, Roger Cheng and Steven Musil state, “Amazon plans to double down on the 7-inch tablet market with two new Kindle Fire models, CNET has learned. Despite speculation that Amazon was preparing a larger 8.9 or 10-inch version, the company will only unveil a new 7-inch Kindle Fire and a slightly revamped version of the original tablet in an event scheduled for next week, according to a person who has seen the products.”

The Kindle Fire over the past couple of months has faced major competition from the likes of the Google Nexus 7, the flagship tablet from Google which was announced at the Google I/O event. The tablets are priced at roughly the same amount and hence they are the only two models that are at loggerheads in the 7-inch segment.

There had been rumours that Amazon would launch a 10.1-inch Kindle Fire in the third quarter of 2012, while tentatively suspending the launch of a speculated 8.9-inch model. The move by Amazon to launch a 10.1-inch tablet is so that the brand can directly compete with the likes of Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet, both of which feature a display size larger than 7 inches. However, with this report, it appears that they would likely unveil only two 7-inch tablets instead.

An earlier report stated that the company hopes to debut the next iteration of the Kindle Fire in the second half of this year; the current launch window is late in the third quarter. To do so, Amazon has been approaching developers to bring them up to speed on the new hardware. Sources familiar with the matter have said that the upcoming tablet will be thinner and lighter than the original and will come with a built-in camera as well. Apart from that, the display will be improved upon as well and will sport a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Not only will that apparently make it sharper and more vibrant, it will give it a different aspect ratio, as well. In other words, the display has an entirely new width-to-height ratio.

Share your thoughts on the next Kindle Fire in the comments below.