Nick Bilton at the New York Times’s Bits blog brings up some interesting rumors centering around Amazon hiring five more Android developers. Of course, Amazon already has a Kindle reader application for Android, just as it does for iOS devices, and this could just be their way of bulking up that division in preparation for having to rely more on Android when Apple kicks them off the iPhone and iPad over the in-app purchase debacle.
But Bilton wonders whether Amazon might be preparing to bring out its own full-color Android-based tablet reader. Bilton doesn’t mention the Nook Color (which is a bit odd, since it is after all the most apt existing device to which to compare a putative Android Kindle), but it seems possible that Amazon might be eying that new device and considering how to occupy the same niche. After all, they already do make software that runs on existing color-screen devices.
With the launch of the Kindle 3, Bezos said that a color Kindle was still “multiple years” away. But nothing says he can’t change his mind, especially if the public has proven more willing than he expected to embrace even imperfect color devices. Back in September, a number of people speculated that a color Kindle of some kind might come to market in 2011 despite Bezos’s denials. It hasn’t happened yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s never going to.
People seem to forget that Android is a nothing more then a platform, it doesn’t automatically mean color and touchscreen.
I guess that Amazon wants to unify as much development as possible – moving all Kindle devices (4th gen, 5th gen, color, 3d, or even 3rd gen) to Android would mean that they don’t have to develop operating sytem from the scratch.