Amazon also working on a 10.1-inch tablet, due early next year

Trade publication DigiTimes quoted market sources this morning who heard that the online retail giant, Amazon, is gearing up for mass production of another tablet, a 10.1-inch device, for the first quarter of next year. The world’s largest contract manufacturer, Foxconn, will take care of manufacturing, the report notes. Foxconn is also Apple’s long-time manufacturing partner and they make gadgets and computers for a number of Western brands.

While the report doesn’t cast more light on the device, the screen size suggests a Honeycomb-class tablet. The story does corroborate an AndroidMe claim back in May that Amazon has been working on a family of mobile devices powered by the Android software.

Amazon is also in the process of tweaking its web shopping site to mobile access, apparently in preparation for its inaugural tablet launch next month. That device is said to be a seven-inch slate tightly integrated with Amazon’s cloud and content services.

DigiTimes’ report also notes Amazon placed an order for up to eighteen million Kindle units for the entire year, confirming their lead in the e-reader market with an estimated 60-70 percent share of global e-book reader shipments in 2011.

A Nielsen survey has it that an Amazon device sporting e-reading features of the Kindle and computing capabilities of tablets could appeal to wide demographics. Nielsen says women now amount to a whopping 61 percent of e-reader owners, up from 46 percent last year. As for tablet and smartphone adoption, women climbed only by four and three percentage points in the period, respectively.