Amazon has now announced that the original Kindle Fire is now sold out – the Kindle Fire 2 is expected to be announced at an event on September 6. [original story]Amazon’s Kindle already dominates the E-reader market worldwide, and its Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet running an Amazon-variant Android OS, expanded its marketshare in the budget tablet category – except for one catch, it never launched in the EU/UK.
Amazon said this was due to it struggling to obtain the right to media as it did in the US, and the product has since fallen off the radar for UK consumers without an app store.
Amazon has since said it has been working on the Kindle Fire 2, which is presumably the reason for today’s announcement – preparing the content before the hardware launch.
Amazon has not confirmed any of these details, but the Amazon App store has traditionally been locked down to Amazon devices – which it now says is available for ‘Android phones and tablets.’
Given that Android users can already download headline apps such as Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja and Skyscanner on the Google Play (Android app store), the addition of these apps on Amazon App Store serves next to no purpose – unless a proprietary Amazon tablet or phone launches.
Given the original Kindle Fire is now nearly a year old, and hopelessly outclassed by the Google Nexus 7 (and most other Android tablets), an updated Kindle Fire is the only business plan that makes sense.
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See Amazon’s press release here.
