Are Amazon’s Kindle tablets and e-readers ready to break into the world’s biggest market? We’ve spotted some Chinese Help documentation for Amazon Kindle devices on the company’s China-facing site in a sign that they may be coming for real this time.
Even though the online documentation vanished, we have a screenshot of Google’s cached version of the site (see below). Amazon’s China office declined to comment. → Read More
Here we go again: the rumors of Google branching out into the tablet space have been floating around for what seems like ages now, and the Wall Street Journal has jumped into the fray. They cite the usual handful of unnamed sources, who this time say that Google is planning to open up their own online store a la Amazon to sell Android tablets.
Not just any Android tablets, mind you — co-branded ones that bear Google’s name along with that of the manufacturer. Google does many things (some better than other), but they’re definitely not in the consumer hardware production game. → Read More
If you’re sick of firmware lockdowns and failed reflashings on your other Android tablets, the Auraslate may be for you. It’s basically an Ice Cream Sandwich-compatible tablet built from the ground up for hax0rz and programmers alike.
There are two models – the 7-inch 726B and the 10-inch 1026 – and the 1026 can run the latest version of Android. You can upload any version you want, however, and even the hardware is open source in that you receive a hardware source disk for about $20 extra. → Read More
Following its November debut, HTML5 publishing platform (and TechCrunch Disrupt finalist) Pressly, is preparing to launch its self-serve platform for bloggers. Planned to go live this spring, the platform will allow publishers of any kind – big or small – to transform their WordPress sites, Tumblr blogs, Twitter updates and other social feeds into tablet and touch-friendly sites that work on the iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry PlayBook and Android tablets.
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FixYa, a product Q&A site, took a look at its own holiday stats to collect some facts about many major cell phones and tablets including iOS and Android devices. The conclusion? iPhone owners tend to be most interested in fixing battery and call quality problems on Android users found a number of screen issues including freezing and problematic interfaces.
They also found that the iPad had far fewer support questions than the aggregate number of Android tablets. Obviously the cohort they surveyed isn’t very statistically useful, but they were able to grab quite a few percentages based on page views of various support questions.
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A number of prominent folks have been ripping into the Kindle Fire lately, claiming that it is slow, exhibits poor UX choices, and that consumers are returning them en masse. Heck, even the affable Marco Arment writes “If I didn’t need the Fire for Instapaper testing, I’d return it.”
Tough crowd.
But there’s another narrative that says this is a secret success. Analysts estimate that Amazon will sell 5 million of the devices this quarter, a little under half the iPads sold in Q4 2011 (although the Fire has been on sale for a shorter period). I have a feeling that Amazon will hit or just graze this mark once it tallies holiday sales but, Amazon being Amazon, they’ll never announce total sales. Marco Arment or no Marco Arment, the Fire will do just fine. → Read More
Digitimes, quoting “sources from upstream supply chains,” is stating that PC manufacturers like Dell, Acer, and HP are building fewer tablet products in direct reaction to devices like the iPad, Kindle Fire, and Nook Tablet. Citing an inability to gain traction against devices with rich content to back them up, the manufacturers are looking elsewhere to regain a foothold in the mobile market.
In truth, manufacturers know they won’t get far building vehicles for Android, Google Music notwithstanding. Building and marketing a tablet like the Xoom or the Asus Transformer is a perilous process and is buffeted by the whims of a price-conscious consumer. It doesn’t make economic sense to build and try to sell a few hundred thousand slates that will be considered obsolete in a few months. → Read More
The Nook Tablet, announced last week to much fanfare, is a follow-up to the company’s popular Nook Color and a direct competitor to Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire. I’ve only just got this device into my hot little hands so expect a full review this week but initial impressions are good.
The device is about as big as the Nook Color and the Fire, although the Tablet is considerably more streamlined than Amazon’s offering. The OS is clean and clear with a small ribbon of icons along the bottom of the home screen for video and music as well as newsstand and book apps. There is also an apps menu consisting of a number of preloaded apps including a mail app, Doodle Jump, a crossword app, Hulu Plus, and something called “Angry Birds” that appears to be a bird-spotting companion.
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Short Version: The Archos 80 G9 tablet isn’t necessarily something I’d recommend for the hardcore tablet enthusiast, but it certainly gets the job done. Powered by pure Android 3.2 Honeycomb, the tab offers everything you’d expect out of Android and a nice variety of ports, albeit with a somewhat rough build-quality. → Read More
TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Pressly is an HTML5-based platform that turns online publications into tablet-friendly websites that work on the iPad, Android tablets or the BlackBerry PlayBook. The sites it produces are nearly indistinguishable from their native counterparts, like Flipboard and Zite for example, offering a similar experience for browsing through articles, images and videos. Navigation is designed for the tablet interface, using common gestures like multi-touch swipes and pinches.
Pressly’s platform includes five customizable templates as a starting point, each designed with the needs of different publishers in mind. One template is more text-driven, while others are better for browsing through photos or videos. Like native apps, navigating a Pressly-built site uses intuitive gestures, like a 2-finger swipe up or down to reveal quick navigation and a pinch to close articles. → Read More
Before we enter the breach, I’d like to ask that you all have your grains of salt at the ready because we’re entering some highly speculative territory. Motorola has been going on a domain shopping spree lately, and thanks to a little snooping by the folks over at Fusible, now we’re all privy to Moto’s purchases. → Read More
Remember when I said I thought HP was telegraphing its sales with the TouchPad pricing? And how I said the device is $100 off this weekend? Well either HP is not selling any TouchPads at all ever or they’re on some Quixotic race to the bottom in relation to every other tablet out there. You see, the TouchPad is $379 on Woot this morning.
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What does MSI’s new WindPad want you to do? Enjoy (but only a little) that’s what! That’s why their latest 10-inch Android device, the Enjoy, looks so underpowered.
The device has just appeared on the FCC website and is running a 1GHZ ARM Cortex-A8 processer and, get this, Android 2.3. Feh. → Read More
Panasonic is prepping an Android 2.2-powered e-book reader/tablet hybrid [JP] that’s specifically designed for the Japanese market. The device will offer e-books through a store set up by Rakuten, the country’s biggest e-commerce company, with the initial line-up including a total of at least 10,000 titles. → Read More
Word on the street, specifically Wall St., is that Apple has an “iPad 2 Plus” in the works, with plans to ship in late 2011. Go ahead and grab a salt-shaker now, because despite the truckload of congruent predictions, I still don’t quite buy it.
FBR Capital Markets’ Craig Berger claimed earlier today that Apple has asked for component suppliers’ quotes to build the iPad 2 Plus, which is supposedly a “marginally different device.” → Read More
We didn’t exactly heart the TouchPad. We didn’t hate it, either. We even said that “WebOS and the Palm TouchPad are nearly perfect, an excellent amalgamation of everything that was ever right about Palm.” Granted, perfection in this industry lasts about as long as a battery cycle, and we had plenty to gripe about, but as far as the TouchPad goes, we have hope.
But day-one reviews haven’t been as understanding as we were, which has prompted HP’s webOS boss Jon Rubinstein to blast out an internal letter of support to both the TouchPad engineers and the webOS 3.0 development team encouraging them to keep up the work and continue believing in the product. → Read More
This $99 Archos tablet runs Froyo and has a 7-inch 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchscreen and 4 amazing GB of storage. No mention of processor but I suspect a few TI-81s have sacrificed their lives to be part of this mess. → Read More
Just yesterday, HP finally let slip pricing and availability for the HP TouchPad tablet, which we now know will hit stores July 1. In terms of competition, HP is top-dog when it comes to PCs, but thus far, Apple has dominated the tablet market. The question now is, will HP’s TouchPad finally create a true, aggressive competitor for the iPad? → Read More
Microsoft has chosen to take the semi-exclusive route when it comes to tablet software. While Google’s Android operating system is a free-for-all platform for OEMs, and Apple’s iOS is completely closed off to manufacturers, Microsoft has plans to fall somewhere in between open and closed. Specifically, the PC maker will limit the number of initial hardware makers that can employ the Windows OS on tablets to five, pairing each OEM with a chip maker selected by Microsoft, according to unnamed WSJ sources familiar with the matter. → Read More
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