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Amazon is Working on a $50 Tab for Holidays

The tablets will most likely be simple and is intended for streaming video, browsing through social media and another way to shop on the retailer’s website.

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“Will people tolerate a potentially inferior experience just because a tablet is $50?” said Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett”.

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon boss, has said that Amazon prefers to sell services, like books and movies, rather than make money on devices. The very aggressive pricing will mean the tablet will cost less than the company’s cheapest Kindle ereader, which now costs $79, and will be half the price of the company’s cheapest tablet. Fire tablets are and always have been a portal to Amazon’s shopping and content ecosystem.

He explained that the low prices of their devices were indeed intended to lure those who are budget-conscious but want to find a flawless tablet that suits the price they can afford. Amazon could likewise be investigating different approaches to make the $50 target price possible. However, there is more to Amazon than that, the company has its fingers dipped in the gaming industry as well as tablets. When Amazon priced its Fire smartphone at the same level as the iPhone, sales were poor and the company announced that it would write off United States dollars 170 million, mainly for unsold inventory.

Amazon is also plotting to launch 8- and 10-inch tablets alongside the new bargain basement model. The rumor fails to shed light on the specifications for the new $50 device but it will do away with most of the features which tend to increase the cost of the device, for instance stereo speakers.

Amazon’s cheapest current Fire tablet has a 6-inch screen and sells for $99, including advertisements that appear as screen savers, or $114 without the ads.

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Obviously, this will be among the least expensive tablets on the market-even lower in price than the Amazon Fire HD 6-inch tablet (e-reader).

The Kindle Fire HD 6 which sells for $US114. Amazon is said to be planning a similarly-sized tablet for less than half the price