Kindle Fire 4G in Sprint's device roadmap for 2012?

[pyroscott]

The Kindle Fire has lit up the tablet market or at least the lower end of the tablet market. Amazon's strategy to introduce an inexpensive tablet to drive their own media sales and put them on the map has been a success so far. Will this be followed by the process of offering it through cell phone carriers? They certainly gained some serious market share quickly, with some analysts predicting that Amazon may have sold 6m Fires and it only makes sense that Amazon would want to increase the amount of connectivity to increase their profits on digital media considering that each Kindle Fire generates $136 in new income at Amazon

Amazon may have held off on 3G/4G capability at launch to keep their costs down (3G in the iPad 2 adds $130 to the retail cost) and not have to deal with multiple models. There are rumors that we could see multiple sizes and multiple ways to connect to the internet. http://www.examiner.com/gadgets-in-atlanta/kindle-fire-owners-want-3g-4g-model-survey-says

One thing is for sure, contrary to the complaints on the Amazon messageboard, Amazon will not be offering free 3G connectivity like it offers with some of its Kindle E-readers

[legion125]

I don't know if Amazon would allow a carrier to sell the Kindle Fire. I haven't heard of any plans to make the Fire 3G compatible and Amazon likes to route all its traffic through its site and not other channels. Fire consumers are also not seen as power users as yet, and they mostly use its Wi-Ficonnection for video streaming and web browsing which we all know 3g sucks for video, so I don't know if there is a market for expanding. However, Amazon is considering opening a brick & morter store so who knows, it may be ready to open other channels.

[pyroscott]

Sprint's 3G sucks for video... Because it averages around 400kbps LOL

I think it may be doubtful that the fire is offered by the carriers as a tablet, but it would open up more revenue for Amazon if people had 4G on their Kindle. They figure that each Kindle brings in over $130 in revenue for Amazon from users buying content. A 10 inch 4G Kindle Fire might bring in even more content purchases.

[S4GRU]

I usually find that on a smartphone, it takes aboutt 600k to have decent experience on streaming video. Like Netflix. 1 MB is even better (virtually no buffering). Any faster than 1MB, you don't notice a performance difference. But faster speeds are needed for higher resolution tablets, though.

[pyroscott]

Kindle fire is swiftly becoming the #2 tablet. With 4G streaming would work well. The main thing though, is that I don't know if businesses would use it. It seems like many of the 3G tablet sales are driven by businesses, and the kindle fire is aimed squarely at the budget conscious user that would be more apt to put service on a hotspot device than the tablet.

The wildcard might be if Amazon buys data service wholesale and resells it with the kindle fire

 

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[S4GRU]

The wildcard might be if Amazon buys data service wholesale and resells it with the kindle fire

 

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This is something I hadn't considered, yet. I could see Amazon moving with a Clearwire or LightSquared and maybe even Sprint. That could be a most excellent idea. Brilliant!