Amazon

Amazon Android logo mockup: BGR

The venerable Amazon tablet has inched one step closer to reality with the news that the company has begun sourcing parts for a rumored tablet. According to DigiTimes, a Taiwanese trade publication, Amazon is hoping to ship some two million units in September, in time for the holiday shopping season:

Amazon reportedly has held talks with TPK Holdings, Wintek, HannStar Display and J Touch for the supply of touch panels, indicated the sources, noting that Amazon targets to ship four million tablet PCs before the end of 2011.

However, Apple is pressuring the supply chain considerably. The Cupertino, California company reportedly plans to ramp up iPad 2 manufacturing to twelve million iPad 2 units for the third quarter, up from an estimated 6-7 million units in the second quarter and the 4.9 million iPads Apple shipped during the first quarter. Because of this, the Amazon tablet could be facing serious constraints, the report notes.

The story corroborates a previous report from the same publication calling for a September-August launch. The rumor-mill talk is that the online retail giant will introduce a plethora of Android-driven mobile devices, possibly even a smartphone. Amazon’s boss Jeff Bezos wouldn’t reveal anything beyond dropping hints and teasing us to “stay tuned”.

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Peter Kafka reports for the All Things D blog that Amazon cut a deal with San Francisco-based Triggit to sell adverts on other people’s sites. Previously, Amazon was only selling ad slots on their own web properties, such as IMDB.com and Amazon.com. In a nutshell, the online retail giant buys ad inventory from other sites and resells it to marketers at a premium because they are using data on their shoppers and probing visitors to target likely prospects. The author explains:

Amazon uses the detailed data it collects on its customers and visitors to create pools of potential marketing targets. Amazon tells Triggit to hunt down particular Web surfers after they’ve left the site, using tracking “cookies”; once the startup finds them it purchases ad inventory those users are looking at. Amazon uses that ad space to serve up an ad for the marketer it’s working with, and charges them for the impression.

Granted, this isn’t an ad network per se because Amazon is essentially re-selling other people’s inventory. But looking at the big picture, it’s another sign giving away that Amazon is slowly putting the remaining pieces of a puzzle in place in order to create a comprehensive end-to-end ecosystem designed to efficiently monetize users with physical products, digital media content, apps, advertising and devices. After all, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt included Amazon in the “gang of four” for a good reason.

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Amazon, the well-versed vendor of vertically integrated wireless devices, is on the verge of unveiling a tablet

We’ve heard rumors that Amazon is planning multiple mobile devices and their chief Jeff Bezos teased us to “stay tuned” for a tablet, but the actual release date of their first iPad killer has been anyone’s guess. According to DigiTimes, a pretty reliable Taiwanese publication, the online retailer is gearing up to launch their inaugural Android slate some time in the August-September time frame.

Amazon is poised to step into tablet PCs and will launch models as soon as August-September, with targeted global sales of four million units for 2011, according to Taiwan-based component makers. The timing of launch is to meet the peak sales period prior to Thanksgiving in the US and the year-end holidays in the US and Europe, the sources pointed out.

Four million units is a pretty aggressive target for about four months worth of sales, however…

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Online retailer Amazon just announced that Kindle books have surpassed print books in terms of sales. Folks are now buying more Kindle books than their hardcover and paperback counterparts combined. Amazon said that for every 100 print books customers have picked up since April 1, they have sold 105 Kindle books. The figure excludes free Kindle books and includes hardcover and paperback books where there is no Kindle edition. More amazing facts below the fold…

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PopCap Games, the maker of the popular Plants vs. Zombies game, has announced a deal with Amazon that will see Android ports of their popular titles released on Amazon’s Appstore for Android. Today, Chuzzle launched on the retailer’s mobile bazaar. Popular Plants vs. Zombies will arrive later this month, per the official press release. The good news doesn’t stop here…

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Uh-oh, looks like Amazon is serious about getting on board the Android cluetrain. In fact, they most likely want a piece of the action in the Android space themselves. A tipster told AndroidMe that the online retail giant is planning an “entire family” of Android gadgets for this holiday shopping season.

This tip came from an industry insider with direct knowledge of the project. The information was shared with me in a recent face-to-face meeting and I believe the source to be trustworthy. It was also confirmed by a separate source who has provided reliable information in the past. As with most of my tipsters, they wish to remain anonymous.

Author Taylor Wimberly goes on to lay out the many reasons explaining Amazon’s motivation to compete in this crowded space. He’s got the point and here are just a few…

Update: BGR says:

we have been told that the “entry” level tablet, codenamed “Coyote” will be based on the NVIDIA Tegra 2 platform. The big boy? That’s codenamed “Hollywood” and will be based on the NVIDIA T30 “Kal-El” which will bring a screaming quad-core processor with a 500% performance increase over the dual-core Tegra 2.

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Mr. Bezos needs to work on his deniability skills.  On the subject of Android tablets, Consumer Reports got this from the Amazon CEO:

Asked today about the possibility of Amazon launching a multipurpose tablet device, the company’s president and CEO Jeff Bezos said to “stay tuned” on the company’s plans. In an interview at Consumer Reports’ offices, Bezos also signaled that any such device, should it come, is more likely to supplement than to supplant the Kindle, which he calls Amazon’s “purpose-built e-reading device.”

Bezos acknowledged the popularity of reading e-books (many of them sold by Amazon) on tablet computers such as the iPad. But he added that this popularity doesn’t spell the demise of the Kindle.

“We will always be very mindful that we will want a dedicated reading device,” he said. “In terms of any other product introductions, I shouldn’t answer.”

Amazon of course already has an ecosystem of eBooks, Music, Video and of course its own Android App Store, so the hardware really is the last piece at this point.  Both Analysts and yours truly think it really is only a matter of when.