Amazon Fire Tablet

The Amazon Fire Tablet is a tablet computer range by Amazon.com.

Amazon Fire Tablet
 Release date
September 6,  2012 (Europe)
 Units sold
 System-on-chip used
 Memory
 Storage
 Connectivity
3.5 mm stereo socket
 Online services
 Dimensions
 Weight
 Successor

Built with Quanta Computer, the Kindle Fire was released in November 2011, featuring a color 7-inch multi-touch display with IPS technology and running a custom version of Google's Android operating system called Fire OS. The Kindle Fire HD followed in September 2012, and the Kindle Fire HDX in September 2013.

Apps like Google Play Movies & TV do not work on these tablets.

## History

The device—which includes access to the Amazon Appstore, streaming movies and TV shows, and Kindle's e-books—was released to consumers in the United States on November 15, 2011, after being announced on September 28.

On September 7, 2012, upgrades to the device were announced with consumer availability to those European countries with a localized version of Amazon's website (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain).

The Kindle Fire originally retailed for US$199. Estimates of the device's initial bill of materials ranged from $150 to $201.70. Amazon's business strategy is to make money through sales of digital content on the Fire, rather than through the device itself.

As of October 2012, the Kindle Fire is the second best selling tablet afterApple's iPad, with about 7 million units sold according to estimates by Forrester Research and as of 2013 Amazon's tablets are fourth.

On September 6, 2012, the Kindle Fire was upgraded to the second generation, and its price was reduced to $159, RAM upgraded to 1 GB and processor clock speed upgraded to 1.2 GHz. A more powerful and video-friendly version, the Kindle Fire HD (7 and 8.9 inch versions) was also made available, initially priced at $199 and $299.

On September 25, 2013, the Kindle Fire HD was upgraded to the third generation, priced at $139, and the Kindle Fire HDX was introduced. The Kindle Fire HDX has an improved graphics engine, double the memory, and triple the processor speed of the previous model. The 7-inch and 8.99-inch versions were introduced at $229 and $379 respectively.

In September 2014, the Fire HDX 8.9 and the Fire HD were upgraded to the fourth generation of Fire tablets, removing the "Kindle" naming. There was also a 6-inch that had a quad-core processor priced for $99

In September 2015, Amazon announced the release of a $49.99 USD named Fire 7". It is currently the cheapest tablet Amazon offers.

## Design

### Hardware

The Kindle Fire hardware was manufactured by Quanta Computer (an Original Design Manufacturer), which had also helped design the BlackBerry PlayBook, using it as a hardware template for the Kindle Fire. Kindle Fire devices employ a 1-GHzTexas Instruments OMAP 4430 dual-core processor. The device has a 2-point multi-touch color LCD screen with a diagonal length of 7 inches (180 mm) and a 600×1024-pixel resolution (160 dpi density). Connectivity is through 802.11n Wi-Fiand USB 2.0 (Micro-B connector). The device includes 8 GB of internal storage—said to be enough for 80 applications, plus either 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books. According to Amazon, the Kindle Fire's 4400 mAh battery sustains up to 8 hours of consecutive reading and up to 7.5 hours of video playback with wireless off.

Of the 8 GB internal storage, approximately 6.5 GB is available for content.

The first-generation Kindle Fire has a sensor on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. This is widely considered to be an ambient-light sensor, disabled since an early software upgrade.

### Software

The first generation of Kindle Fire devices run a customized Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OS. The second generationKindle Fire HD runs a customized Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Along with access to Amazon Appstore, the Fire includes a cloud-accelerated "split browser", Amazon Silk, using Amazon EC2 for off-device cloud computation; including webpage layout and rendering, and Google's SPDY protocol for faster webpage content transmission. The user's Amazon digital content is given free storage in Amazon Cloud's web-storage platform, 5 GB music storage inAmazon Cloud Drive, and a built-in email application allows webmail (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL Mail, etc.) to be merged into one inbox. The subscription-based Amazon Prime, which includes unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows, is available with a free 30 day trial period.

Content formats supported are Kindle Format 8 (KF8), Kindle Mobi (.azw), TXT, PDF, unrestricted MOBI, PRC natively, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4,VP8.

Because of Amazon's USB driver implementation, the Kindle Fire suffers from slow USB transfer speeds. For example, transferring an 800MB video file may take more than three minutes.

## Reception

Analysts had projected the device to be a strong competitor to Apple's iPad, and that other Android device makers would suffer lost sales.

In a review published by Project Gutenberg, the Kindle Fire was called a "huge step back in freedom from the Kindle 3"; the reviewer noted that Amazon introduced a "deliberate limitation" into the Fire that didn't exist in the previous version: it is no longer possible to download free e-books from websites such as Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and Google Books and have them stored permanently in the same places where books from Amazon are kept.

## Sales

Customers began receiving their Kindle Fires on November 15, 2011, and by the following December, customers had purchased over a million Kindle devices per week. International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated that the Kindle Fire sold about 4.7 million units during the fourth quarter of 2011.

Recently, the Amazon Kindle Fire helped the company beat their 2012 first quarter estimates and boosted the company's stock in extended trading. As of May 2013, about 7 million units have been sold according to estimates. Statistics for FY2014 or Q1&2 2015 are not yet available.