Amazon may be better positioned to compete with Android tablets

If you read our interview with Amazon president and CEO Jeff Bezos back in May, you're probably not surprised to hear rumors ramping up about a new tablet coming from the online retailer. Bezos told us to "stay tuned" when asked about the company's plans to launch a competitor to the iPad and other tablets.

Amazon's tablet should be available by October, according to an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. It will be an Android tablet with a screen of about nine inches. No information on pricing was available.

In fact, a tablet is essential to Amazon's ability to keep up with the rest of the marketplace. Its Kindle e-book readers so far have neither touch capabilities nor color, both of which would be present in a tablet computer. But Amazon is also planning to launch two new Kindles during the third quarter, both black-and-white but one with touch, according to the Wall Street Journal report.

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Amazon's challenge will be to keep its tablet from competing with the Kindle. But as Bezos said during a visitto Consumer Reports' headquarters last spring, "I hate the term 'killer,' as in one device killing another in the marketplace."

If some of the rumors are true, Bezos is missing one opportunity to differentiate Amazon's tablet from the Kindle. According to those rumors, the tablet won't have a camera.

Of course, the biggest competitor to an Amazon tablet is the same behemoth other tablet manufacturers face: Apple's iPad. As of the end of March, Apple had sold 19.5 million tablets.

One place where Amazon may be better positioned to compete with other Android tablets is with apps.Amazon's Appstore for Android offers a paid app for free every day, and, like Amazon's website, provides a Recommended for You section based on apps you've already downloaded. Still, while Amazon's market may become an able challenger to Google's Android Market, Apple's App Store remains far ahead of both, with 90,000 apps.

Meanwhile, by taking advantage of touchscreens and large displays, Amazon's Windowshop app for the iPad shows the company's savvy when it comes to shopping, and the tablet's potential as a shopping device.

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