Amazon, the online retail giant and maker of Kindle e book reader, has placed an order for a tablet with Samsung.
The tablet will be a low cost device and is expected to run on a heavily modified version of Android operating system.
Amazon recently unveiled the Kindle application for Android tablets, and is looking to expand its e book business.
The co-founder of gadget blog Engadget, Peter Rojas, said he is 99 per cent sure that the e commerce giant is having Samsung build a device to compete with Apple’s iPad.
However, Rojas said Amazon might run a custom version of Android rather than employ Android 3.0 or Honeycomb, Google’s tablet OS.
“It’s entirely possible that Amazon’s tablet, like (Barnes & Noble’s) Nook Color, will use Android as a base upon which to build a totally customised experience that tightly integrates Amazon services,” Rojas wrote on April 21.” That integration would let Amazon charge a lot less for its tablet than it would otherwise,” he added.
Amazon would use such a low cost tablet, possibly in the range of $200 to $300, to extend its current web services, including thousands of books from the Kindle Store, movies and TV content from Amazon Instant Video and music from its new Cloud Drive digital storage locker.
Amazon has also built its Amazon Appstore for Android to rival Google’s Android Market.
The company recently introduced an advertisement-subsidised version of its Kindle e book reader and it could employ a similar approach to further reduce the price of its tablets also.
This would pose a strong challenge to iPad as well as other tablets that are going to be launched soon, as most of them are priced at $500 to $1,000 or more.