Amazon is pushing forward to get its own Android-powered tablet device.
Amazon has decided to be very bullish on the market and is offering almost every Android device available in the US. Now it wants to cash in directly, as it plans to expand its line of first-party products. Right now that just consists of the Kindle.
Quanta, a company without a lot of name recognition outside its home base in Taiwan, expects to sell more than $3.5 billion worth of the Android tablets this year, with plans to launch its first one in the second half of 2011.
The news comes after Barnes & Noble’s Nook Color, which was powered by a special restricted version of Android, was upgraded to a complete version of Android 2.2, turning it from a proprietary e-reader to a multi-functional device.
The reality Amazon may be facing is that people only want multi-functional devices now. There used to be a time when a phone that was also a portable media player was a terrible phone and a terrible media player.
Those days are over, and now the more functionality a device can have, the more attractive it is.
While Amazon hasn’t said much about its tablet plans, this order with Quanta proves the company is interested and is moving forward.
