UPDATED 14:35 EDT / MAY 09 2012

Amazon’s Kindle In Jeopardy as Tablet Takeover Continues

Most of us own tablets or e-readers, but these days one must wonder–has everyone shifted to tablets?

Amazon recently reported a stunning Q1 financial report, but this sparked some questions as to how the company pulled it off.  Seeking Alpha notes that Amazon is the least transparent company in the industry, so much so that even their own investors have no clue as to how many products the company sold.  But Amazon always told them that their e-ink readers and Kindle Fires were selling well.  Now there’s proof that their e-reader line is in jeopardy.

Amazon is the top customer of E Ink Holdings, the world’s biggest e-ink display manufacturer, which, during an investors conference, stated that the company suffered a major loss.

“Our major customer was too optimistic about its sales in the fourth quarter of last year and ordered too much from us,”  E Ink Holdings chairman Scott Liu said during the conference. “That made the customer order almost nothing from us in the first quarter.”

Since Amazon launched the Kindle Fire, their Kindle sales have gone down, almost to zero, so the Kindle e-readers may soon be doomed.  Though little thought is being given to e-readers, their owners defend that they are better for reading e-books, and more portable than tablets since they are lighter and work well in all lighting conditions.  But some still argue that it doesn’t make any sense to carry around an e-reader plus a tablet, so why not just use a tablet as an e-reader?

It seems inevitable that tablets will soon takeover the world, edging out a portion of smartphone users and a good portion of e-readers.  And every major tech brand seems to know it.

Apple iPad mini?

According to some sources, Apple will launch a seven-inch iPad or an iPad mini by August, the iPhone 5 by September, and a 10-inch iPad by December.  The rumor is based on the reported information that orders for the said devices have been placed at Pegatron Technology, a global electronics manufacturing company.

“Pegatron has already finished expanding its equipment and labor force for Apple’s orders,” said a report from DigiTimes.  “To mainly focus on Apple’s orders, Pegatron has also internally decided to downsize its SI motherboard department and to shift resources to Apple’s orders.”

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

The 10.1 version of the Galaxy Tab 2 will be available by May 13.  The news came after numerous online and offline retailers unveiled their pre-order page for the said tablet.

The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and features a serious 1GHz dual core processor, the display has a 720p resolution at 1280×800 pixels, 1GB of system memory, 16GB internal storage, a microSD card slot that can be used to expand the memory up to 32GB, a 3MP rear-facing camera, USB 2.0 port, a 3.5mm microphone jack, support for WiFi-N (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth 3.0.

BlackBerry PlayBook 2

Research in Motion promises that the BlackBerry PlayBook 2 will be LTE compatible but before the company reaches that point, they announced that they need developers for their BlackBerry 10 platform.  RIM promised that developers would earn $10,000  in their first year on the app store, if not, the company will shoulder the check for the balance. Wow.

Nokia

Nokia’s outgoing chairman Jorma Ollila previously unveiled their tablet plans stating that what the Finnish company would bring would be different from the tablets these days and that they are looking into making a Windows 8-based tablet.

Soon after Ollila made his statement, Nokia took back what he said claiming that the media misconstrued Ollila’s statement.  Nokia clarified that they are still observing the tablet market and they still have no plans or made any official announcement regarding a Windows 8 Nokia tablet.


A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU