Amazon refreshes Fire tablets with modest upgrade
Amazon says the state of its tablet business is strong, a statement rivals would be hard-pressed to make. The Internet’s biggest retailer saw double-digit growth in the unit sales for its Fire tablets last year in the company’s top markets including the U.S. One in three tablets sold in the States was a Fire.
Amazon of course mostly plays in the budget segment of the market and on Wednesday announced that it is refreshing its lineup, however modestly, starting with the entry level $49.99 Fire 7. Amazon says it has a superior 7-inch display on a thinner and lighter Fire 7, bolstered battery life (to about 8 hours of mixed use) and improved the Wi-Fi. It comes with 8GB of storage, upgradeable through an optional microSD card.
The biggest news on the step-up 8-inch Fire HD 8 model is that Amazon has lowered the price by $10 to $79.99 for a 16GB version. The tablet has a quad-core processor and up to 12 hours of battery life.
Both models feature Alexa, Amazon's digital voice assistant.
At the same time, Amazon improved the offerings on its kids tablets. The $99.99 Fire 7 “Kid’s Edition” now has double the storage (16GB). And for the first time, Amazon introduced an 8-inch HD version of the Kid’s Edition. It costs $129.99 and includes 32GB of storage.
The main distinction on kid’s tablets is they come with features moms and dads will appreciate: Special cases, two year guarantees — Amazon will replace broken tablets during that period, no questions asked — plus a year of Amazon’s FreeTime Unlimited subscription with content deemed appropriate for 3 to 12 year olds.
What is your child really doing on that tablet? Amazon now can tell you
Amazon’s tablets aren’t the most powerful ones in the market and the specs upgrades here are generally minor. But that seems besides the point.
According to Gartner, Amazon passed Lenovo and moved into fourth place among the largest tablet provider during the first quarter of 2017, behind only Apple, Samsung and Huawei. But Amazon increased its shipments by 38.5% during the period, at the same time the overall market declined 9.3%.
Gartner analyst Annette Jump says the numbers "highlight the fact that Amazon tablets linked to media content, music, books, etc is very appealing to selected consumers and their kids targeted products also have done very well.”
Strategy Analytics senior analyst Eric Smith concurs. "Amazon is very unique among tablet vendors in that the hardware is not nearly as important as the services that the consumer uses and purchases," he says. “While bigger vendors are concentrating on cracking the enterprise market with 2-in-1 tablets, Amazon has doubled down on entertainment and it’s worked.”
All of Amazon’s new tablets ship June 7.
Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter.