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Amazon Unveils Premium Android Tablets to Challenge Apple, Samsung

What happened

On Oct. 8, Amazon unveiled a new lineup of premium tablets, developed under the codename Kittyhawk, switching from its proprietary Fire OS to Google's Android OS and featuring the Alexa+ AI voice assistant. The Alexa Tablet lineup is priced between $230 and $550, well above the roughly $180 price of the Fire HD 10, previously Amazon's top-tier Fire tablet; the highest-end 128GB model costs $550, competing directly with Apple's iPad starting at $450 and Samsung Electronics' Galaxy Tab lineup starting at $550. The lineup comprises three models: the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro (11.95-inch IPS LCD, 2,800×1,840 resolution, 3:2 aspect ratio, 280 ppi, available with a standard LCD or a Nanomatte display developed with Corning, with the display supplier not disclosed, using MediaTek's 4-nm Dimensity 8400), the Alexa Tablet 11 (11-inch IPS LCD, 2,560×1,600, 16:10, 276 ppi) and the Alexa Tablet 8 (8.7-inch IPS LCD, 1,340×800, 5:3, 180 ppi), the latter two using the eight-core MT8189 tablet processor; the application processors are supplied by Taiwan-based MediaTek. Alexa+ access is limited to Amazon Prime members and subscribers to a separate Alexa+ plan. According to IDC, in the second quarter of this year Apple held 34% of the global tablet market and Samsung Electronics 17.5%, while Amazon's share fell sharply to 1.9% from 8% a year earlier, and global tablet shipments declined 12% year over year to 33.6 million units. The source does not state the cause of the launch event itself; the article notes Fire OS had faced persistent criticism over its limited app ecosystem and that Amazon's strategy of selling devices at or below cost had weakened hardware competitiveness.