Amazon Reportedly Aiming For the Low End With a Loss-Leader $50 Tablet

Posted by timothy on Tuesday September 8, 2015 @01:40AM from the horses-for-courses dept.

Amazon has been dogged with criticism for its high-end, somewhat oddball phone, but done rather better with its high-end Fire tablets, and has mostly defined the market for e-ink book-reading devices with its long-lived Kindle series. Now, according to a report in the WSJ echoed by Fortune (and by Ars Technica and many others), the company is said to be working on a tablet aimed at the low end of the market, with a 6-inch screen, a mono speaker, and a tiny pricetag -- which could be as low as $50. "At the bottom end of the range at least, the devices won’t be priced to make a profit," writes Fortune. "The dirt-cheap price tag is intended to maximise the reach of its e-book and Amazon Prime video streaming content."

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Adventures in Vendor Lockin by supremebob · 2015-09-08 02:26 · Score: 1, Interesting

I guess that I could make sense for Amazon to undercut the price of their competitors for their tablet since they can configure Fire OS to only allow purchases from Amazon.
Want an movie? Buy it and download it from Amazon! Want a book? Buy it and download it from Amazon! Want some music? You get the idea.
Did we mention that you get a discount and some "free" downloads if you sign up for Prime? Come on, it's only $99 a year!
I'm sure that they'll make it difficult as hell to sideload apps and download content to the tablet via USB as well. No thanks, I'll pass on this one.