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Three new Kindle Fire tablets are on the way: report

Amazon may be close to releasing a successor – or successors – to its popular Kindle Fire tablet. 

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Reuters
The Kindle Fire, shown here, was released last year to great acclaim. Now Amazon may be close to launching a pair of Kindle Fire successors.
  • By Matthew Shaer

The Kindle Fire has been a success for Amazon – so much so that the Pew Research Center, in a report released earlier this year, estimated that the release of the Fire single-handedly helped drive up tablet sales nationwide. Now comes news that Amazon is prepping three new Fire tablets, including an upmarket 8.9 inch device with a high-resolution screen, which would presumably compete with the recently-launched Apple iPad. 

Amazon plans to hit a range of price points (and prospective audiences), according to the China Economic News Service. Two of the new tablets would measure 7-inches, just like the current Fire, but one would get a screen resolution of 1024 by 600, and the other would clock in at 1280 by 800. Meanwhile, the "high-end" Fire would measure 8.9-inches, more in line with the iPad, and ship with a 1920 by 1200 display. 

Caveats abound – there's no confirmation from Amazon, and as Mark Hachman notes over at PC World, the CENS report contradicts recent rumors that put just one "Fire 2" launching this summer.

Still, it certainly makes sense that Amazon would want to get a piece of the ballooning luxury tablet market currently dominated by Apple. Some analysts have predicted that Apple could unload 12 million units of the new iPad before the end of the current quarter.

In related news, Amazon today released the Kindle Touch 3G in 175 countries, and in seven languages – German, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and American or British English.

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