PCWorld reports on a rumor from occasionally-right rumor site DigiTimes that Amazon will soon be dropping the price of its current 7” Kindle Fire to $149 as it releases a newer 7” version with better specs. The new tablet and price drop for the old one are rumored to happen during the third quarter of this year.
It seems like a reasonable thing to expect a new, better-spec’d tablet release and a price drop for the old one. That’s how Apple and Barnes & Noble have been managing their respective tablet releases, after all. And in keeping with Amazon’s pricing strategy on the Kindles, it usually tries to drop the price on older hardware as much as it can so as to hook in new people with it.
So a $149 Kindle Fire sounds about right, and it also means that for the first time a major-name Android(ish) tablet will be widely available below the $150 mark new. (And a few months on, it’s even possible we might see refurb sales break the $100 barrier.)
Though what I’m really curious to see is just how far Amazon can lower the price on its e-ink Kindles, especially the ad-supported versions. Will we see $10 or $20 drop off the price on the lowest-end models? (Especially if those models are last year’s which are still kept around alongside newer models.) This Christmas might very well be the first to see a major name-brand e-reader available new for under $50, whether ad-supported or not.
