Amazon To Play Ultimate Limbo With $50 Tablet Just In Time For Holiday Rush
When it comes to tablets, Amazon’s Fire HD 6 is its cheapest offering, priced at just $99. As for eReaders, the cheapest Kindle will set you back just $79. However, what if we told you that Amazon is working on a tablet the undercut even the most basic Kindle in pricing?
According to WSJ, Amazon is working on a new Kindle Fire tablet that will cost just $50. That’s right, $50 for a tablet from a company that many people trust, rather than some obscure-branded Android tablet you might find on the back page of an ad from Ollie’s or Big Lots.
As you might expect, there will be some compromises to hit that price point, including ditching stereo speakers for a mono speaker. When it comes to the display, we’d don’t know how far Amazon is willing to cut corners. The current Fire HD 6 has a resolution of 1280x800 — is the company willing to drop down to 1024x768 or even 1024x600 to lower costs? It’s quite possible.
It’s also possible that Amazon may get heavy-handed with advertising to help subsidize the cost of the $50 tablet. Amazon already provides lock-screen advertisements for its $99 Fire HD 6 (coughing up an extra $15 gets rid of the ads altogether), but could more pervasive ads encroach into other parts of the UI, which could end up annoying customers enamored with rock-bottom prices?
“Will people tolerate a potentially inferior experience just because a tablet is $50?” said Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett in an interview with the WSJ. “Amazon has to be very careful about what they’re giving up to get to that low price point.”
In addition to the $50 tablet, Amazon is also expected to release two additional tablet models this year with screens sizes of 8 inches and 10 inches respectively.
