Amazon Kindle Fire 2 slated for launch this month

With Google recently launching their flagship tablet, the Google Nexus 7, the smaller sized tablet wars have been taken to a whole new level. This tablet from Google was launched to directly compete with the highly successful 7-inch Amazon Kindle Fire. The competition appears to be heating up, as fresh reports suggest that Amazon is preparing a tablet that is rumoured to be called the Kindle Fire 2 and it will likely go head to head with the Google Nexus 7. The launch date of the Kindle Fire 2 is the major talking point and a fresh report by Unwired View who has sourced information from China Times states that the tablet will be unveiled by either this month or August.

Amazon Kindle Fire to pose a threat to Nexus 7

The report states, “According to the Chinese paper, Amazon has already ordered 2 million 7-inch Kindle Fire 2s from Quanta, for early August delivery. Which sounds about right for the rumored new Kindle Fire announcement on July 31st.” They go on to add, “The new 7-inch Kindle Fire will have a metal frame, the rest of the chassis in plastic, with displays coming from LG and touch panels supplied by TPK.”

Prior to this report, it was rumoured the Kindle Fire 2 will have better integrated lighting and more hardware improvements. No details about the processor and the other specs have been revealed yet. When it was first launched, the Kindle Fire was touted by many as the 'iPad Killer', primarily because of the price tag that it came attached with. It faced competition from the likes of Barnes & Noble Nook tablet, but the competition is going to be even more massive this time, if the pricing of the Fire 2 and the Nexus 7 is going to be similar. Amazon may also announce Kindle Touch, which will be at a lower price point. What this means is that ‘low budget but non-performing’ tablets will soon be phased out as the world shifts focus to decent quality products selling at ultra-low prices.

The other rumours floating around indicate that Amazon is likely to 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 seven-inches.

For those eager to know what this tablet will look like, there is not much information regarding the same, but it is believed that the build quality of the new Kindle Fire 2 tablets has been vastly improved. The build quality of the new tablet is a major step up from the current generation Kindle Fire. The codename of the tablet is believed to be the Coyote, while the 10.1-inch tablet might be codenamed Hollywood. This larger model also might feature a quad-core processor.