Amazon

Amazon just announced in a press release that the Kindle Fire is shipping today — a day early — to users who pre-ordered. Amazon is already touting the Fire as their best selling item. For users who didn’t pre-order, they can order the Kindle Fire now for $199. For those that did, expect to be seeing your Fire soon, but in the mean time check out our review roundup.

Amazon.com today announced it is shipping Kindle Fire, already the bestselling item on Amazon.com, one day early. Kindle Fire offers more than 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, books, magazines, apps and games, as well as free storage of Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync for books and movies, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a vibrant color touch screen, a powerful dual-core processor and Amazon Silk – Amazon’s new revolutionary web browser that accelerates the power of the mobile device by using the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services cloud – all for only $199. 

In a separate press release, Amazon announced that the $99 Kindle Touch Wi-Fi and 3G will be shipping tomorrow, six days earlier than originally intended.

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The $199 Amazon Kindle Fire lands this week and the embargo on reviews was just lifted.  Besides a well-timed gem of an interview of Jeff Bezos by Steven Levy, here are some of the bigger Kindle Fire reviews from around the web:

Fortune:

The Kindle Fire isn’t a revolutionary device, but it is Amazon’s most important product ever. [It] takes Amazon’s wildly popular services and presents them in a solid piece of hardware with a responsive, easy-to-understand interface that works. It doesn’t have the iPad’s extra layer of polish and sheen, but with the Amazon brand, a wide ecosystem of services at its disposal, and that $199 price point, it doesn’t really need it. In that sense, Apple’s tablet just met its first real competitor.

NYTimes

The Fire deserves to be a disruptive, gigantic force — it’s a cross between a Kindle and an iPad, a more compact Internet and video viewer at a great price. But at the moment, it needs a lot more polish; if you’re used to an iPad or “real” Android tablet, its software gremlins will drive you nuts.

Gizmodo:

(The iPad finally has serious competition). If you like what Amazon Prime has going on in the kitchen, the Fire is a terrific seat. It’s not as powerful or capable as an iPad, but it’s also a sliver of the price—and that $200 will let you jack into the Prime catalog (and the rest of your media collection) easily and comfortably. Simply, the Fire is a wonderful IRL compliment to Amazon’s digital abundance. It’s a terrific, compact little friend, and—is this even saying anything?—the best Android tablet to date.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opnJA3FoCis]

Well, the advantages of the Nook Tablet are falling by the wayside as Amazon signs up more and more content partners at this late hour for its Kindle Fire.  Today Amazon announced that the Fire will also have Hulu Plus and ESPN ScoreCenter apps.

With Hulu Plus, Amazon Kindle Fire users can instantly watch thousands of TV episodes – including the entire current season of popular shows like Modern Family, Glee, Saturday Night Live, The Office, House, and Grey’s Anatomy – from top networks including ABC, Comedy Central, The CW, FOX, NBC, MTV, VH-1, and hundreds more.  Hulu Plus also offers entertainment fans access to classic TV favorites like Lost, Ally McBeal, and Battlestar Galactica and hundreds of popular and award-winning movies for $7.99/month with limited advertising. ESPN ScoreCenter brings Kindle Fire customers scores, news, and standings from hundreds of sports leagues around the world. Never miss another goal, pitch, basket, try, touchdown or wicket. Whether you follow the NFL or the Premier League, the Ashes or MLB, MMA or Formula One, ScoreCenter offers the most comprehensive global sports coverage available.

How are people going to pick competing 7-inch Androids when they don’t even have Hulu Plus?
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Starting at Midnight PT tonight, Amazon will give every new purchaser of a new Hotspot device some Amazon Credit – hopefully enticing them to pick up a Kindle Fire.

With a hotspot-ready smartphone, you can access the Internet on your Kindle Fire or other Wi-Fi devices anywhere.

Beginning at midnight PST tonight and for a limited time, customers who buy hotspot enabled smartphone will receive a $100 Amazon.com Gift Card. Also, those that purchase a mobile hotspot device will receive a $50 Amazon.com Gift Card (Note: for new lines of service and upgrade customers. Hotspot feature for smartphones must be activated at time of purchase to qualify.)

This promotion extends to some of the most desired phones out there, including the new Motorola Razr releasing tomorrow, Samsung Epic Touch 4G Android Phone (Sprint) , Samsung Galaxy S II 4G Android Phone (AT&T)  and even the HTC DROID INCREDIBLE 2 Android Phone (Verizon Wireless) , which is available for only $0.01!

Additionally, we’ve heard that Amazon is having a special on the RAZR Launch for $111.11.  If the above deal works on that, you are looking at $11 for one of the sickest phones on the market when bought with a tethering plan.

Tune into Amazon in a few hours.

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Yesterday Amazon detailed a selection of apps to be available at launch and mentioned “several thousand more apps” will hit the Amazon App Store in preparation of next week’s Kindle Fire launch. Today they are putting in the groundwork by pushing out an update to the Amazon Appstore for Android app brining it up to version 2.0 and adding a few new features and an overhauled UI.

You’ll notice several UI improvements that bring it in line with the version of the store we’ve got a peek at on the Kindle Fire. Expect shades of grey to replace any hint of white from the previous version, and larger fonts throughout.

New features include in-app purchases and subscriptions, parental controls, and the ability to view any given app’s permissions before installing. Amazon is also promising faster installs and and load times, as well as the usual bug fixes. If you haven’t already, click here to install the Amazon App Store.

DigiTimes is reporting (via All Things D) that Amazon has once again just increased Kindle Fire orders, this time by a million units, to an expected five million units by the end of 2011. This follows the company upping initial orders of 3.5 million to four million units during Q3, as they prep for anticipated demand during the upcoming holidays.

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According to a report from The Atlantic, Amazon might be in the process of readying their own Siri competitor as the company moves to acquire voice-to-text startup Yap. While nothing is official as of yet, the proof comes from an SEC filing that shows Yap has merged with “Dio Acquisition Sub”, a company located in Amazon’s 410 Terry Avenue building in Seattle, Washington.

The voicemail-to-text tech at the heart of Yap’s private beta service (which shutdown as of October 20th) isn’t all that impressive, but the company is said to have a significant amount of intellectual property related to speech recognition. This has lead analysts to speculate the acquisition could be Amazon’s first step into building voice recognition service that could potentially compete with Apple’s Siri voice-control technology.

Of course with the Kindle Fire launch next week, and lack of Siri on iPad, it’s easy to dream up a voice-controlled Amazon tablet experience. Although, it’s likely voice recognition tech makes it’s way to Amazon’s various mobile apps and online experiences as well if the IP acquired from Yap is indeed the start of the company’s venture into voice control.

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With the Kindle Fire set to start shipping next week, Amazon sent out a press release this morning confirming a ton of Amazon Appstore-optimized apps will be available at launch. While the Fire runs a scaled back version of Android, the app selection through Amazon’s app store will be far from the full-fledged Android Market. Here’s what you can expect on day-one.

Most of these are expected or were already mentioned during the launch event– Pandora, Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, The Weather Channel, Rhapsody, and Comics by comiXology. In addition, Amazon says there will be “several thousand more apps” and is already working with a ton of developers including all the usual suspects–Rovio (Angry Birds), EA, PopCap, Gameloft, and Zynga.

You’ll be able to grab the Kindle Fire for $199 just about everywhere starting November 15. The press release (below) also provides the following list of other apps already optimized for the 7-inch tab:

Allrecipes, Bloomberg, Cut the Rope, Doodle Fit, Doodle Jump, Fruit Ninja, Jenga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Airport Mania, Battleheart, Pulse, The Cat in the Hat, Quickoffice Pro, Jamie’s 20-Minute Meals, IMDb Movies & TV, and Monkey Preschool Lunchbox.

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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KQlPCflWP9k#!”]

Coming up tonight on Charlie Rose, Mark Zuckerburg has made comment that “Google is building their own little version of Facebook”. While that was certainly a hit towards Google, Zuckerburg was happy to give props to Amazon and Apple as partners.

Amazon and Apple “are extremely aligned with us,” said Zuckerberg. “We have a lot of conversations with people at both companies just trying to figure out ways that we can do more together, and there is just a lot of reception there.” Meanwhile, “Google, I think, in some ways, is more competitive and certainly is trying to build their own little version of Facebook,” Zuckerberg said.

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Last we heard Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus was set to ship in the US on November 13th. Ahead of schedule, Amazon is now shipping the the 7-inch, Android Honeycomb-powered device for $399. If you’re unfamiliar, the Tab Plus ships with a 1024×600 Super LCD display, 1GB of RAM, microSD slot, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 3-megapixel main cam, and 2-megapixel front cam. You can grab it now in 16 and 32 GB variants. It also packs in the Peel Smart Remote application and built-in IR sensor for controlling your A/V setup. Head over to Amazon to get it now.

Amazon also recently started shipping their Android-based Galaxy Player 4 and Galaxy Player 5, iPod touch-like media players. You can grab the 4-inch model for $229, and the 5-inch model for $269 now.

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In a move that might drive more e-book-only tablet users to Amazon (opposed to iBooks or elsewhere), Amazon has announced a new book borrowing service called “Kindle Lending Library”.  The move is said to encourage Prime subscriptions, which are required for the service, but could be part of Amazon’s larger strategy as the $199 Kindle Fire prepares to enter the tablet market. Either way,

The service will allow users to borrow from a selection of approximately 5,000 books (up to one a month) that have been enabled for lending by the publisher. You’ll be able to return the book at any time without due dates, and bookmarks and highlights will be saved in the event you borrow or purchase the book in the future. Included in the available content will be 100 current and previous New York Times bestsellers.

Not so fast if you’re hoping to borrow books on your non-Kindle tablet, however. The service will only be made available to owners of an eligible Kindle device that are also Amazon Prime subscribers. A Prime membership is currently going for $79 per year, a pricey ask for just the book borrowing service if you’re not planning on taking advantage of the 10,000 movies and tv shows, and free two-day shipping available to Prime users. The good news is the $199 Kindle Fire will come bundled with one free month of Prime.

It appears Amazon hasn’t entirely convinced publishers of the long-term benefits of the service, as they note in the press release they are actually ” purchasing a title each time it is borrowed by a reader” to provide a “no-risk trial” for publishers:

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Interesting move here by Amazon.  By dropping the nicely-specced Vizio VTab eight inch tablet to $199, they’ve created a competitor to their own Amazon Kindle Fire tablet which at 7 inches is also priced at $199.

The VTab runs Android 2.3, has 4GB of built in storage and an SD card slot for additional storage and 512MB of RAM.  It bests the Kindle Fire with a bigger, higher resolution 1024 x 768 display, front facing camera for video conferencing (with Google Talk and Skype), built in IR blaster, an SRS 3 speaker sound system as well as an internal GPS.

It lacks the Kindle’s Dual Core processor.

For my money, this beats a Kindle Fire.

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While you might usually ignore the 99 cent Android apps being discounted on Amazon, you’ll probably want to grab today’s deal with productivity suite OfficeSuite Professional 5 discounted from $15 to $0. If you’re unfamiliar with the app, expect the ability to create, view, edit, and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files. (as well as view PDFs) with a slick file browser, Google Docs integration, and a two-pane UI optimized for Honeycomb tablet users. The app’s page on the Market also claims it’s the only “mobile office for Android that allows opening of password protected” files. We haven’t had time to put OfficeSuite 5 to the test, but many OEMs including Sony Ericsson selected it to come preinstalled on over 20 million devices, so they must be doing something right. There’s a video of the app in action courtesy of AndroidAuthority after the break.

If you haven’t checked out the latest version, here’s what’s new in OfficeSuite 5:

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As discovered by Fusible, Amazon has made the unexpected move of spinning its recently launched Kindle Fire (tablet) brand into a seperate company. Found in a filing with the U.S. Patent Office, Amazon has registered patents for both the Kindle Fire and Amazon Silk under the company Seesaw LLC. Both Amazon and Seesaw have the same patent lawyer.

Now what would be the reason? As Fusible points out, Amazon will probably be able to get the necessary investments for the Kindle Fire, and any other mobile/tablet brand they plan to launch.

All major Android backers are now paying royalties to Microsoft for using Android in smartphones, even the likes of Samsung and HTC. Goldman Sachs estimated the Windows maker could rake in a whopping $444 million this year alone from Android patent pacts, easily exceeding Windows Phone licensing revenues. Now that the $199 Kindle Fire tablet has come into full view, the question arises whether Amazon, too, will run to Microsoft’s arms seeking Android patent protection.

The two companies last year had cut a cross-licensing agreement. However, the Seattle Times notes that the 2010 deal covers the existing Kindle e-readers but not Android, which powers the Kindle Fire tablet. TechCrunch’s MG Seigler, who saw early prototypes of the Fire tablet, described  a forked Android version which is at the core of the Kindle Fire experience:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUtmOApIslE]
Kinda neat. The voiceover quotes French writer François-Marie Arouet Voltaire.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes property of all.

And then, Amazon adds its own cheesy part: From Kindle, the Fire is born. Talk about pun intended.

The new Kindle Fire tablet costs $199 and ships November 15.

Also, amazon.com/kindlefire.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u7F_56WhHk]
Amazon has just unveiled at a press conference in New York its inaugural seven-inch tablet and a new family of Kindle e-readers that now include the $99 Kindle Touch and the low-priced regular Kindle which retails for just $99. Seth Weintraub is on the scene and the latest information includes the news that Amazon will be rolling out its own brand new browser for the Fire tablet, named Silk.

The company set up a new blog for the Silk team and their first blog postexplains that Silk is “an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire. According to a promo clip included above, a “split browser” architecture (kinda similar to Opera’s Turbo mode) taps the Amazon cloud which caches files (limitless caching) and does the heavy-lifting, depending on workload. It’s a smart approach which offload page rendering to Amazon Web Services, resulting in faster page load times. And here’s what’s so smart about it, according to the Silk team:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMULBXflsWc]

While the new Kindle Fire tablet failed to impress folks who were hoping for an iPad killer, the $79 regular Kindle has gotten us excited because this thing is now within grasp of an average consumer and if history is an indication, sales should grow at an exponential rate. Conveniently, Amazon has a new television commercial to push the $79 Kindle into mainstream. Clearly they want you to view the device as the perfect holiday gift.  The new inexpensive Kindle is available today. Its touch-based counterpart named the Kindle Touch is arriving in time for Thanksgiving, priced at $99/$149 for WiFi/3G variant.

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Image via The Verge

In addition to the new Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon has also re-shuffled their Kindle offering at a New York event this morning. Our Seth Wientraub is on the scene and has the latest info. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has just unveiled a brand new e-reader with a touchscreen. The device is aptly named the Kindle Touch and costs just $99 for the WiFi-only version or $149 if you want to use it over 3G cellular networks.

They are shipping it November 21, right before Thanksgiving, and taking pre-orders today. Perhaps more important than that is the news that the regular Kindle now costs just eighty bucks. Plus, they are shipping the $79 Kindle today.

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Note: This is a mockup, not the actual Kindle Fire

Just as Amazon’s media event begins in New York, serving as a launchpad for their inaugural tablet, Bloomberg spoils the announcement by publishing key pieces of information about the device. It will be called the Kindle Fire, as rumored, and will cost just $199, which is a pretty big deal. The tablet has a seven-inch color display which responds to touch (just two fingersat once, though) and a “fresh and easy user interface” running on a forked Android version. Another biggie: The device will come with a 60-day free trial of Amazon Prime (a $79 a year value) membership.

Bad news: It has no cameras – not even a microphone. Heck, it even lacks 3G access so looks like the Fire will be a WiFi affair only. We’ll have more info soon as our own Seth Weintraub is on the scene in New York at Amazon’s press conference.

Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is betting he can leverage Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce to pose a real challenge to Apple’s iPad, after tablets from rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Research In Motion Ltd. have fallen short. Sales of Amazon’s electronic books, movies and music on the device may help make up for the narrower profit margins that are likely to result from the low price, said Brian Blair, an analyst at Wedge Partners Corp. in New York.

The analyst observes what all of us have known for a long time, that the Seattle-based online retailer has the most compelling ecosystem to take on Apple’s iTunes juggernaut:

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A mockup of a seven-inch Amazon tablet running a forked Android version.

As Amazon gears up to debut its long-rumored tablet on Wednesday at a media event in New York (a subtle hint of a media-focused launch), TechCrunch chimes in with a name. The Android-driven device will be apparently marketed under the Kindle Fire moniker in order to distinguish it from Amazon’s highly regarded family of dedicated Kindle e-readers. Manufactured by Foxconn, Apple’s favorite contract manufacturer, the gizmo should boast a seven-inch color touchscreen (not true multi-touch) and won’t have an email client preloaded, but users will be able to download one from its mobile application store or use a built-in browser for web mail, writes author  MG Siegler who first saw the device early this month.

Meanwhile, AlllThingsD’s Peter Kafka writes the online retailer is cutting partnerships left and right with Hollywood studios and magazine publishers. Amazon has now added Fox shows to its streaming catalog, Kafka reported today, explaining the deal includes shows Fox no longer airs and old Fox movies such as “Office Space,” “Speed” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. Also, at least three magazine publishers have thrown their weighg behind Amazon’s tablet project: Hearst, Conde Nast and Meredith. Kafka cites industry sources claiming all three publishers “have deals to sell digital versions of their titles on the new device”.

Those titles are allegedly optimized for Amazon’s seven-incher and terms are said to mirror the 70:30 revenue split offered by Apple’s iTunes content store. Even though its success is anything but given, conventional wisdom has it that the Amazon tablet should benefit from Amazon’s many cloud services and long-standing partnerships with content providers. What’s unique about Amazon…

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If all of the rumors are true, Amazon has a 7-inch “media tablet” that runs a forked version of Android and will connect to all of Amazon’s services, including its Appstore, Movies, TV, Music and of course eBooks. It won’t be true multi-touch but the rumored price is half of the iPad’s (just like the screen) at $250.  Who is making this for Amazon?  Foxconn of course.

Yes, it sounds just like a Nook (which is getting an interesting update soon) with a better backend store.

via Verge
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