[Rumor] Amazon May Be Working on 7-Inch Kindle Fire Successor and 9-Inch Version Too

[dgstorm]

An analyst at Pacific Crest, Chad Bartley, is predicting great things for the Amazon Kindle Fire. He has increased his initial projections for sales of the Kindle Fire this year from 12.7 Million to 14.9 Million. Additionally, he also either has some insider information, or feels overly confident in his personal crystal ball predictions. Bartley indicated that he believes Amazon is working on a 7-inch successor to the current Kindle Fire that will have some enhanced specs, and he also believes that Amazon is designing a 9-inch follow-up to the Kindle Fire. Of course, previously, we have heard these kinds of rumors before, so it could just be speculation on his part, but it would be interesting news if it turns out to be true.

As always, we will keep our eye out for any new info and let you know.

Source: Kindle-FireForum via PhoneArena

 

[yann2]

dgstorm, thank you, interesting news. Seems there will be a lot of new things, price changes, op systems debutting this year.

I followed your link to the sources, and ultimately to the AllThingD's post that seems to have originated it.

Good reading, and I liked an insightful comment there by mknopp :

I am not an analyst, but I think that I would have waited a month to see what Apple's response to the Fire is going to be. Just for kicks, I ran some numbers and using the build cost estimate from iSuppli for the iPad 1 and iPad 2 I figured that Apple could now offer a 16 GB iPad 2 for $299 and still make around 25% margin. This is, of course, much less than they usually make. But, if they are serious about not ceding any market segment, as Cook has said before, then they very well might accept this low margin at the low end.

This makes the 7" Kindle Fire, which anyone has to honestly admit is much more stripped down than an iPad, not such a good looking deal when you figure what all that extra $100 gets you.

Of course, Apple might not do this at all. They might release it at $399 or they might differentiate the iPad 3 into a high-res pro version and a low-res vanilla version and completely redefine their price structure.

My point is, Cook has said that he is not willing to cede any market segment to the competition and now that they finally have a company exerting any sort of real pressure on a market segment for tablets you can be assured that within a few weeks Apple is going to respond to the Fire. Therefore, I am not sure I would be betting the farm on this guy's predictions carrying any weight in a very short time.