At a live event today, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced new products at at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California.
Bezos unveiled the Kindle Paperwhite, a smaller, thinner Kindle Touch which will retail for $119, with 3G, it’s $179. Pre-orders begin today and the product ships on October 1.
The current Kindle Touch will remain on the market with a $10 price decrease from $79 to $69. It ships September 14th.
The Kindle Fire, with double the current RAM and claimed to be 40% faster with longer battery life gets a $40 price cut from $199 to $159. It also ships on September 14th.
Bezos then announced the “Kindle Fire HD” in two sizes:
• 8.9-inch (1920 x 1200, IPS, 254 ppi) display (iPad’s Retina Display is 9.7-inch IPS @ 2048 x 1536, 264 ppi) with dual stereo speakers (the first tablet with Dolby Digital Plus) and dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi with dual antennas. 8.8mm thick. (iPad with Retina display is 9.4 mm thick.) HD front-facing camera. with “Kindle FreeTime,” multi-user support (think kids) with time limits that can be set for various functions (TV, apps, etc.) HDMI out. Bluetooth.
– 16GB Wi-Fi-only – $299
– 32 GB with 4G LTE – $499 (Users get 250MB per month data, 20GB of Amazon cloud storage, and a $10 app store credit for US$49.99 per year)
• 7-inch, dual stereo speakers (the first tablet with Dolby Digital Plus) and dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi with dual antennas. HD front-facing camera. Multi-user support with time limits that can be set for various functions (TV, apps, etc.) HDMI out. Bluetooth.
– 16 GB – $199
8.9-in Kindle Fire HD ships on November 20th. 7-inch Kindle Fire HD ships September 14th.
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Cook, the ball’s in your court.
