The Kindle Fire Will Have A Whole New “Cloud Accelerated” Mobile Browser Called Amazon Silk

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to... ? Learn More

Jeff Bezos announced a new family of Kindle’s today, including the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch. But he also had one more thing. The Kindle Fire tablet is coming with an entirely new mobile browser called Amazon Silk. The browser is “cloud-accelerated” in that it splits tasks between the cloud and the device.

“It is very challenging for mobile devices to display modern websites rapidly,” says Bezos. “So we wondered is there some way we can use the incredible computational horsepower of Amazon EC2 to accelerate mobile web browsing.”

Amazon is taking advantage of its Web services and EC2 compute cloud. Instead of waiting 100 milliseconds for each part of a web page to load, Amazon Silk can cache most of a webpage in the cloud and deliver all the subparts at since. And since EC2 has more bandwidth than a tablet ever will, it can do the same tasks in 5 milliseconds instead of 100.

In a video explaining the browser (watch below), one Amazon engineer describes it like this: “You can think of Amazon Silk as a small store for files you access. What we have done is create a limitless cache used to render the web pages you view every day. It does not take a single byte of storage on the device itself.”

The so-called split browser essentially has two homes: on the Kindle Fire itself, and in Amazon’s EC2. Basically, when a user pulls up a webpage on their Kindle Fire, EC2 handles all the rendering to optimize it for the Fire’s screen. Images are resized on the fly, and what’s more, it tracks user’s behavior. Users who visit TechCrunch all the time, will notice quicker load times because Silk detects that pattern of activity and pre-caches the site. Or similarly, if a lot of people going to the New York Times’ homepage today then click on a set of particular stories, those subsequent pages can be predictively pre-cached and delivered faster.

Amazon calls it “Dynamic Split Browsing,” and while it’s not a terribly new concept—Opera Mini similarly optimized webpages for mobile devices—it’s one that could make a huge difference in a user’s web experience.

Launch Date: September 28, 1994

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them all in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells, or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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Amazon Just Won The Android Tablet Wars With The $199 Kindle Fire

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The Android tablet electoral races are done. There’s a new mayor in droidville. But this guy didn’t roll into town with pomp and circumstance. He strolled down mainstreet and simply offered more than any other candidate through a plan of down-to-earth sensibility and affordability. Meet the Kindle Fire.

Amazon just unveiled the Kindle Fire, which will without question dominate the sub-iPad price points for years. Amazon did it right by copying Apple’s formula. Tablets do not sell on specs; Amazon barely touched on the Fire’s hardware during its announcement. Instead, Jeff Bezos, doing his best Steve Jobs impersonation, stood tall on the stage and ran through a long list of features that makes the Fire an iPad alternative the world has wanted.

The Fire runs Android but it’s invisible to the user. Amazon instead built a custom UI on top of an unspecified Android build. This is the right move for most consumers. Android 2.x is not meant for tablets. Sure, some die-hards love it on a slate, but most of those same users will profess that it’s not right for the general consumer. Honeycomb isn’t much better and requires more beefy hardware — a dealbreaker for a company such as Amazon looking to undercut the iPad’s price. Enter Amazon’s massive server capability.

Amazon is leveraging its many server farms to pre-render, and therefore, smooth out the overall web browsing experience. Called Amazon Silk, the browser learns users behaviors and starts caching often visited pages for quicker load times. The system intelligently offloads content to Amazon’s Elactic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) that shrinks it to a more manageable size: Flash, images, and all the heavy content. All this is done before the data hits the tablet which makes for, well, a more silky experience. Visit TechCrunch a lot? Great, thanks, but the page will load even faster thanks to caching smart of Amazon Silk.

Sure, the Fire is a front-end for a bunch of Amazon services, but this back-end processing will allow the $199 tablet to feel like nothing else in its price point. It might even load pages quicker than the A5-powered iPad 2.

The Amazon Fire is, in a sense, an iPod touch and is hitting the market right when such a stop-gap product is needed. The iPad is clearly a “better” device with better hardware and more functions, but the Fire is $300 less and still rather capable. Likewise, the Fire might not be the best Android tablet, but Amazon has clearly compensated for the lackluster hardware with a fresh interface. Consumers have shown a hesitance for non-iPad tablets, but the $500 price point is out of reach for many consumers. A $200 tablet, loaded with Amazon’s media offering, is the right product to kick start tablets from niche to mainstream

Amazon followed Apple’s lead in launching media services prior to its hardware. Over the last year, company has invested heavily into streaming video, MP3 downloads and cloud computing. It all makes sense now. By showing consumers that, say, the Amazon Prime Instant Video works well on user’s computers, they’re now more comfortable buying a tablet built around the service. This media content instantly pushes the Fire to the front of the Android line. For the average consumer, the Fire is the perfect low-cost iPad alternative.

Launch Date: September 28, 1994

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them all in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells, or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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Amazon Tacitly Confirms The “Kindle Fire” On Their Website

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

It won’t be long now before Amazon kicks off their big press conference, where the much-awaited Kindle tablet is rumored to make its first public appearance. We’ve learned recently that Amazon will be calling it the Kindle Fire, and the company seems to have quietly confirmed the name on their website.

Let’s try something here: punch “amazon.com/food” into your address bar, and you’ll be redirected to the company’s food and grocery selection. Likewise, “amazon.com/clothes” takes you to their virtual equivalent of a department store. Take a wild guess as to where “amazon.com/kindlefire” leads you.

Yep, the “kindlefire” subdomain redirects you to the Kindle store. Coincidence? I very much doubt it — normally, tacking anything onto the end of the amazon.com URL takes you straight to an error page, and other Amazon-owned Kindle names similarly lead to a dead end. Take for example KindleWave.com — Amazon registered the domain name in late August, but amazon.com/kindlewave leads to an error page.

The issue of the domain name also seems to have been squared away: Domain Name Wire reports that Amazon has recently purchased the KindleFire.com domain name from its original owner. At time of writing, the URL leads nowhere, but expect that to change shortly.

We’ll have more details when the press conference kicks off at 10 AM, but keep your eyes peeled on the Kindle Fire page: something interesting is likely to pop up before too long.

UPDATE: Our live blog of the event is getting ready to start, so feel free to mosey on over and see what Amazon is up to.

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Amazon Tops 1 Million Kindle Books In Just Four Years

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Today at Amazon’s press conference in New York city, the company announced the Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet.

But that’s not all CEO Jeff Bezos had to say — the Amazon boss spoke on the success of Kindle as a service, noting that four years ago “Amazon had 90,000 books. Today we’re over a million, and that doesn’t include the copyright-free texts.”

Bezos mentioned that the only way the Kindle could succeed was to create demand not only for the device, but for the content, also known as e-books. Despite the huge growth of physical book sales in the past 15 years, Kindle sales still outpace them.

As you may or may not know, the Kindle has been the best-selling e-reader on the market for the past four years, but Amazon clearly isn’t resting. Bezos also introduced three new Kindle models, all under the $149 price-point.

Launch Date: September 28, 1994

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them all in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells, or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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Amazon Unveils New $79 E-Ink Kindle, $99 Kindle Touch

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Looks like the Kindle Fire wasn’t all Amazon had planned for us. Amazon has revealed a new line of E-Ink Kindles that looks to bolster their “traditional” eReader lineup. The three new models have taken the stage: the $79 Kindle, the $99 Kindle Touch, and the $149 Kindle Touch 3G.

The new super small, non-touch Kindle was announced to appeal to Amazon’s legion of eReading purists. It’s small enough to fit in a pack pocket, and will cost users a scant $79 — customers can order today, and Amazon says it will ship today too. While it retains physical buttons, Amazon’s traditional Kindle keyboard is gone. In order to drive the price that low, the new Kindle also comes packed with Amazon’s Special Offers and their Amazon Local deals service.

The Kindle Touch features an IR touch system that’s similar to the one seen in the most recent Nook, and squeezes it into a body that’s both smaller and lighter than the current model. By going touchscreen, the Kindle Touch does away with the classic Kindle design and instead goes for a very unassuming form factor. The Kindle Touch also sports a new feature called X-Ray, which provides “more than just definitions.” It seeks to give users context by providing Wikipedia info without having to switch into a browser.

Amazon is going aggressive with the pricing here: the Kindle Touch will go for $99 — a super-enticing price point by any stretch, but one that’s probably going to ensure these things fly off the shelves come the holidays.

The Kindle Touch will also come in a global-friendly 3G model which will run $149 — not a bad price considering users get a free lifetime of data in 100 countries. Both units are available for pre-order today, but units will ship starting shipping on November 21.

Amazon’s eReader lineup has gotten a tremendous shot in the arm with everything that’s happened today. While the Fire seems primed to take on both Apple’s iPad and BN’s Nook Color line, the new E-Ink Kindles aim to keep the old-school Kindle fans loyal to the brand.

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Why No Kindle Touch Or Fire For EU, UK?

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Jeff Bezos recently said that these days, “if you are just building a device you are unlikely to succeed.” He certainly seems to be backing that statement up, with the launch of the Kindle Fire producing more optimism than the last ten non-iPad tablet launches combined. It seems that people do indeed like the idea of a purpose-built device that does a few things well, walled garden or not.

But Bezos glossed over the other side of the “make your own ecosystem” coin: providing and administrating that ecosystem not only requires immense resources, but can occasionally cause major roadblocks. In this case it appears that the Kindle Fire and Touch will be unavailable UK or EU, for reasons and duration not specified. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that they’re more than just devices, would it?

Amazon hasn’t replied to my queries, and given that they haven’t publicly commented on this so far, I don’t expect much of an answer even if they do. In the meantime, let’s look at the possibilities as to why this roll-out is limited, in order of escalating likelihood.

1. They haven’t gotten the devices approved by European government authorities. You can’t release a wireless product unless it’s been cleared by the FCC here in the US, and there are similar agencies throughout the world that conduct their own, slightly different testing. However, submitting devices to these authorities is a matter of course and I doubt Amazon would simply fail to do so. And the devices are too similar to others out there to cause any serious delay in their approval.

2. The Silk browser is incompatible with European privacy and data protection laws. The way Silk works, in a nutshell, is it offloads some rendering and querying to Amazon servers, which in a way request a page on your behalf and then stream it to you in an optimized format. This man-in-the-middle technique isn’t new in principle, but having it as the default mode of communication for a major device is. It’s possible that the system has run afoul of regulations prohibiting private data from being routed through a third party like this. Naturally Amazon would be using localized datacenters, but the ownership of the data may fall into a grey area not yet fully approved by the EU and UK (this is ZDNet’s hypothesis).

This is an interesting idea, but I don’t think the law is that protective, nor that similar between the UK and EU, on this topic at least. Furthermore, this does nothing to explain why the Touch isn’t available, either. It uses the same “experimental” browser as the rest of the e-ink devices.

3. They don’t have the content. This is almost certainly it. Despite spending hundreds of millions on Euro content providers like LoveFilm, they just don’t have the libraries and rights in order. Bezos took his own advice about launching just a device, since without a superior selection of content, the Amazon Fire is just a second-rate tablet with an Amazon veneer. They’ve spent years developing relationships and clout here in the US, and Bezos can be confident that they’re providing not just a good tablet experience, but a huge selection of content along with it. Clearly he’s not confident they can do the same in the EU.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t explain why the Kindle Touch is unavailable. My only thought is that the new touch interface hasn’t been localized to the various other regions yet, but that seems like a rookie mistake, not something Amazon would be likely to overlook.

I feel fairly sure that the Fire is unavailable because Amazon hasn’t yet assembled a quorum of content partners, and a piecemeal release in some countries but not others would go contrary to their regional release strategy. But why a device that only differs from the competition in brand and interface (the Kindle Touch is nearly identical to the Nook Touch and Kobo Touch) would fail to be released is still a mystery. I can think of no credible reason why Amazon would want to only launch in the US, so I believe there must be some insoluble problem, or several, at the heart of it. Or maybe I’m just missing something really obvious.

If you have any compelling conspiracy theories or know something I don’t about any dispute or law that might prohibit these devices from being sold, please share. Until Amazon comments on this, it’s all speculation.

Update: several commenters suggest it’s a supply chain issue. Time will certainly tell, though personally I’m still backing the the content thing. Reports said Amazon had orders in for four million units to be sold just in 2011. I’d say that’s a lot to book for just the US, but I could be wrong. And I don’t see the suppliers failing to fill the order; the device isn’t made of uncommon components.

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Video: Jeff Bezos Demos The Kindle Fire

Erick Schonfeld is the Editor of TechCrunch. He oversees the editorial content of the site, helps to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produces TCTV shows, and writes daily for the blog. He is also the father of three adorable children. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to... ? Learn More

The highlight of today’s Amazon event was when CEO Jeff Bezos finally announced the Kindle Fire about midway through. We captured it on video, and you can see for yourself how Bezos introduced the device.

He demos the unique interface, which highlights the media you’ve interacted with most recently. There is also Whispersync for movies, which lets you pick up watching a movie where you left off when you move between devices. And he even plays Fruit Ninja to show off the dual-core processor’s speed.

You can also watch our hands-on videos for both the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch to see the devices in action some more (but the one above is the only one with Bezos). And here is more coverage of the Kindle Fire and the rest of the Kindle family.

Launch Date: September 29, 1994

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them all in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells, or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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Kindle Fire brings you Movies, apps, games, music, reading and more, plus Amazon’s cloud-accelerated web browser Product features: 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books Amazon Appstore - thousands of popular apps and games Ultra-fast web browsing - Amazon Silk Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle Fast, powerful dual-core processor Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

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AmazonLocal Brings Daily Deals To A Kindle Near You

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

It may have started with a quiet rollout, but a recent announcement shows that it’s AmazonLocal‘s time to get loud. According to Amazon, their Groupon-esque deals service will start displaying bargains on their Special Offer-oriented Kindles when a new software update goes live in coming weeks.

AmazonLocal, which came about due to Amazon’s partnership with LivingSocial, is currently live in 44 markets across 15 states — not bad for a service that’s only been live for a few months. Kindle owners will be able to take advantage of offers in New York City, Seattle, Philadelphia, and Chicago, just to name a few.

The Special Offers Kindle will be able to detect the user’s location, and display any nearby deals for that day. Users will be able to purchase those available deals directly from the Kindle without having to whip out their credit card, as the payment will be likely be processed from whatever card Amazon already has on file. Once all that is taken care of, users can mosey on up to the counter, flash their Kindle, and enjoy their savings.

It’s a logical move by Amazon, but it’s brilliant nonetheless. By releasing the Kindle with Special Offers, Amazon has already managed to target a presumably well-read audience who have made it known that they enjoy a bargain. In shoehorning AmazonLocal onto those Kindles, Amazon can get deals out to people who may be more likely to bite the bullet than others.

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Sony’s Latest Kindle Killer Is World’s Lightest eReader

Chris Velazco is a mobile enthusiast and writer who studied English and Marketing at Rutgers University. Once upon a time, he was the news intern for MobileCrunch, and in between posts, he worked in wireless sales at Best Buy. After graduating, he returned to the new TechCrunch to as a full-time mobile writer. He counts advertising, running, musical theater,... ? Learn More

These days, it’s getting tough for companies that make eBook readers to differentiate. Brief forays into jumbo models aside, Amazon’s Kindle has kept things simple and elegant since day one, while Barnes and Noble went the full-featured Android route with the Nook Color.

Sony, to their credit, was among the first to make readers with appeal that extended beyond hardcore techno-literature buffs, and today’s announcement of the ultra-light PRS-T1 shows that they haven’t quite given up the ghost yet.

Sony’s new generation of eReaders seem to have more than a few design cues from the Xperia line of handsets: the T1 features a row of super-slim control buttons and a gently curving bottom edge. It’s a handsome device, something that’s equal parts book reader and fashion accessory. Weighing in at 168g, and 8.9mm thick, it’s ideal for a spot of on-the-go light reading.

Looks aside, the T1 also packs a 6? diagonal touchscreen display for easy navigation between pages and within menus. Users can also use their fingers or the included stylus to make notes on pages, a feature that would have helped the Kindle quite a bit in its academic trials. The T1 comes with 2 GB of flash memory preinstalled, which stores up to 1,200 eBooks if Sony is to be believed. Digital hoarders will find comfort in the microSD card slot that supports up to 32 GB of their favorite musty tomes.

The device also manages to squeeze in a WiFi radio into its slim frame, allowing for wireless book downloads from Sony’s Reader Store, and interestingly, the ability to wirelessly borrow books from libraries that choose to play along.

Will the T1 do the impossible and overthrow Amazon and BN’s hegemonic hold on the eReader market? In all honestly, probably not, but a functional and stylish alternative can help keep innovation alive and the big guys on their toes.

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Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

It’s called simply the “Amazon Kindle”. But it’s not like any Kindle you’ve seen before. It displays content in full color. It has a 7-inch capacitive touch screen. And it runs Android.

Rumors of Amazon making a full-fledged tablet device have persisted for a while. I believe we were one of the first to report on the possibility from a credible source — the same person who accurately called Amazon’s Android Appstore. That source was dead-on again, it just took Amazon longer than anticipated to get the device ready to go. They’re now close.

How do I know all of this? Well, not only have I heard about the device, I’ve seen it and used it. And I’m happy to report that it’s going to be a big deal. Huge, potentially.

First of all, before every commenter asks, no, sadly, I don’t have any pictures to share. That was the one condition of me getting this information. So instead you’ll have to rely on my prose to draw a picture of the device in your head. Or you can just look at a BlackBerry PlayBook — because it looks very similar in terms of form-factor.

So here’s what I know and what I saw:

Again, the device is a 7-inch tablet with a capacitive touch screen. It is multi-touch, but from what I saw, I believe the reports that it relies on a two-finger multi-touch (instead of 10-finger, like the iPad uses) are accurate. This will be the first Kindle with a full-color screen. And yes, it is back-lit. There is no e-ink to be found anywhere on this device.

Earlier this week, reports suggested that a 7-inch Amazon tablet could be released in October, with a larger, 10-inch version to follow next year. That’s somewhat accurate. As of right now, Amazon’s only definitive plan is to release this 7-inch Kindle tablet and they’re targeting the end of November to do that. The version I saw was a DVT (Design Verification Testing) unit. These have started floating around the company. It’s ready, they’re just tweaking the software now. If it’s not in production yet, it will be very soon.

Originally, Amazon had planned to launch a 7-inch and a 10-inch tablet at the same time. But that plan changed this summer. Now they’re betting everything on the 7-inch. If it’s a hit, they will release the more expensive 10-inch tablet in Q1 2012.

So how much will the 7-inch Kindle cost? $250.

Yes, Amazon has been able to trim the cost of the device to half of the entry-level iPad. And it will be the same price as Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color, which this will very obviously compete with directly. Both have 7-inch color touch screens. Both run Android.

And this is where things get really interesting. As anticipated, Amazon has forked Android to build their own version for the Kindle. Simply put: it looks nothing like the Android you’re used to seeing.

The interface is all Amazon and Kindle. It’s black, dark blue, and a bunch of orange. The main screen is a carousel that looks like Cover Flow in iTunes which displays all the content you have on the device. This includes books, apps, movies, etc. Below the main carousel is a dock to pin your favorite items in one easy-to-access place. When you turn the device horizontally, the dock disappears below the fold.

Above the dock is the status bar (time, battery, etc) and this doubles as a notification tray. When apps have updates, or when new subscriptions are ready for you to view, they appear here. The top bar shows “YOUR NAME’s Kindle” and then the number of notifications you have in bright orange. It looks quite nice.

There are no physical buttons on the surface of the device. You bring up a lower navigation menu by tapping the screen once. This can take you back home, etc.

But the key for Amazon is just how deeply integrated all of their services are. Amazon’s content store is always just one click away. The book reader is a Kindle app (which looks similar to how it does on Android and iOS now). The music player is Amazon’s Cloud Player. The movie player is Amazon’s Instant Video player. The app store is Amazon’s Android Appstore.

Google’s Android Market is nowhere to be found. In fact, no Google app is anywhere to be found. This is Android fully forked. My understanding is that the Kindle OS was built on top of some version of Android prior to 2.2. And Amazon will keep building on top of that of that over time. In other words, this won’t be getting “Honeycomb” or “Ice Cream Sandwich” — or if it does, users will never know it because that will only be the underpinnings of the OS. Any visual changes will be all Amazon.

They are not working with Google on this. At all.

There is a web browser (of course), and while it’s styled a bit to match the Kindle UI, it looks pretty much the same as the Android’s WebKit browser. Yes, it has tabs! And yes, Google Search is still the default (the Kindle also has its own search tool to find content on your device).

Overall, the UI of this Kindle felt very responsive. You can flick through the carousel seamlessly. This is something Amazon has apparently been working on quite a bit, I’m told. And they continue to. Some of the page-turning touch mechanics still needed a bit of work in the version I used.

I believe the visual web reading app Pulse will be bundled with the Kindle. A game like Angry Birds may be as well. Again, it uses Amazon’s Android Appstore, so all of the content accepted into that store will play well on this device. Apps, games, content, you name it. Amazon creating their own app store is starting to make a lot more sense, and looks potentially very smart (as anticipated).

A few more bits about the hardware:

I believe it is running on a single-core chip (though I’m not 100 percent sure). My understanding is that the 10-inch version, if it comes, will have a dual-core chip.

I also believe the device only has 6 GB of internal storage. The idea is that this will be more of a “cloud device” for things like music and movies. The storage is meant for storing books and apps There were a few references to an SD card expansion, but I couldn’t find a slot on the hardware itself.

This initial version of the device will be WiFi-only. Amazon is supposedly working with carriers to possibly product 3G-enabled versions (as they have with their other Kindles), but that won’t be the case at launch.

I’m not sure what the battery life is like (I only played with it for about an hour), but I imagine it is very good and in line with other tablets — 10 hours or so.

The back of the device is rubbery — again, it’s very similar to the PlayBook (it’s black as well). The power button is underneath if you’re holding it vertically (which is a bit odd — but it’s obviously to the side if you’re holding it horizontally). There’s a micro-USB port (presumably for powering the device as well). The speakers are of the top of the device (again, if it’s being held vertically).

There is no camera.

So why will people buy this device instead of a Nook Color? Well, beyond the deep Amazon services integration, there will be two other reasons, I believe. First, Amazon is going to promote the hell out of this thing on Amazon.com. Second, the plan right now is to give buyers a free subscription to Amazon Prime.

The service, which Amazon currently sells for $79 a year, gives users access things like free unlimited two-day shipping, and no minimum purchases for free shipping. More importantly for this product, Prime users get access to Amazon’s Instant Video service. There will be more Kindle-related perks, I imagine.

As far as the existing e-ink-based Kindles, all I’ve heard is that they’ll continue to co-exist with this new tablet (though the DX may or may not stick around). They’ll simply be the low-end, low-cost Kindles, whereas this new one will be the high-end one (at least until the 10-inch version comes out, if it does). One source said it doesn’t seem likely that Amazon is going to release a touch-screen e-ink Kindle, like the new Nook, anytime soon. But none of that is confirmed, it’s simply speculation based on the emphasis on getting this new tablet to market.

Oh and one more thing: Amazon has been working on a multi-touch screen/e-ink hybrid tablet device. But that’s nowhere near completion, I’m told. So for now, this new Kindle will have to do.

That’s all for now. I suspect even more information (and pictures) will start leaking out soon — again, the new Kindle is very close to being done. Not only is the device real, from what I’ve seen, it’s solid. I suspect it will be on many people’s holiday wish-list this year.

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep...

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In July 2005, Google acquired Android, a small startup company based in Palo Alto, CA. Android’s co-founders who went to work at Google included Andy Rubin (co-founder of...

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