This is only the latest in a number of reports that have suggested a 9-inch Fire could launch sometime this year, so the only thing really new about it is the source. It made a lot of sense for Amazon to introduce a mid-sized tablet early on and get people hooked on its platform. At least some of those will be inclined to upgrade to the 9-inch version, and people whose friends enjoyed the 7-inch version but who want something larger themselves might be more inclined to buy it as well.

The only downside for Amazon is that this larger Fire will be going head-to-head against Apple’s same-sized iPad, rather than positioning itself in a niche Apple had no plans of filling. The most visible previous competitors in that position—the BlackBerry PlayBook, the HP TouchPad—haven’t done so well. And if Apple kicks the game up another notch with a new Retina Display in this year’s iPad 3, that will steal some of the luster from a cheaper standard-display 9” Fire.

And, of course, we’ve not yet seen any confirmation that Amazon is really planning a 9” Fire at all.

The company feels it will be able to get more performance out of an Omap than it could a Tegra. On Notion Ink’s “Designing Adam 2” blog, Rohan Shravan promises:

Unlike last time where we banked on Tegra without possibly fully utilizing its power, this time our focus is to offer TI the best product based on OMAP. TI is a very respectable firm and I believe Adam II will be a marvel in their portfolio.

The company may face an uphill battle against Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which a lot of people are finding is all the tablet they need. It remains to be seen whether a daylight-visible Pixel Qi screen will provide enough of a competitive advantage., and whether Notion Ink can improve the performance significantly over the original Adam.

(Found via Engadget.)

Further research indicates that the RPAD is only $10 off what you could get it for on Amazon and has gotten two one-star reviews, the Coby Kyros is available at the same price new on Amazon as it is refurbished on Geeks (though it has gotten overall better reviews than the RPAD, averaging 3 stars), and the Pandigital Novel is only $30 more on Amazon new. And all three devices run older flavors of Android 2 (and if reviews on Amazon are to be believed, the “Pandigital Multimedia Novel 4GB 7” Touchscreen Tablet Android w/Barnes & Noble eBookstore & Stand” can no longer even access Barnes & Noble’s e-book store, because it’s limited to Android 2.0 and B&N now requires Android 2.2—which only the RPAD, out of all three devices, has).

Maybe it would be best to stick with Kindle, Nook, or Kobo Android tablets after all, huh?

It turns out that there just weren’t enough pre-orders of the Grid 10 tablet to save the company, and it couldn’t secure additional funding—so instead of shipping the tablets (and sending a free one to everyone who bought the original Joo Joo) it went under, reportedly owing $40 million to creditors. (It was pretty clear when pre-orders were canceled and the website disappeared last month that something like this was coming.)

I expect to see Michael Arrington crowing about this on Uncrunched later today. Personally, I think he should be glad that Techcrunch doesn’t have any part of that mess (well, if he were still with Techcrunch, anyway). If they had kept up the association, guess where that $40 million would be coming from? Instead, Fusion Garage shoved Techcrunch out of the way and took that bullet itself—even if it didn’t necessarily intend to at the time.

(Found via Engadget.)

Update: As expected, Arrington has some things to say about the story—including calling attention to a tweet from Fusion Garage’s founder. Arrington writes:

In case it isn’t crystal clear, it looks like Fusion Garage is trying to get out of all that pesky debt, take as many employees as possible, and start a new company. This is what lawyers call fraud, which is exactly what I’ve been screaming for two years now.

Needless to say, Arrington is not the most unbiased of sources about the company. This does seem a little suspicious, though.

In terms of what’s under the hood, The Verge reports:

In terms of raw specs, the XO 3.0 has an 8-inch, 1024 x 768-resolution PixelQi display, which can be read indoors and out, a Marvell Armada PXA618 processor, 512MB of RAM, and will be configurable with either Android or Sugar operating systems. Sugar is OLPC’s own Linux operating system, which was designed specifically for kids. "We designed the XO-3 with an open firmware and with open BIOs so it is easy to support multiple operating systems. Countries can choose between Android and Sugar," [OLPC CEO Ed] McNierney said.

The specs seem comparable to the Kindle Fire, which has a 1024×600 7” screen and also boasts 512 MB of RAM. And if OLPC cranks up its “Get One, Give One” program, the price to consumers would be about the same as the Kindle Fire, too.

In terms of design, the tablet is significantly thicker than the clipboard-like concept photos, and doesn’t have the concept’s finger-ring on the corner either. (Not surprising; it looked to me like it was just waiting to break off and leave sharp edges under any kind of physical abuse.) It has a silicone cover that should keep it safe in most conditions.

Here’s hoping the device does get offered to the public. It might make a nice alternative to the Fire for tablet-interested folks on a budget.

Pointing out that the Fire’s explosive sales debut (compared to HP’s TouchPad fizzle) proves that devices need compelling content services in order to sell, and that Amazon is (allegedly) selling the Kindle Fire at cost as a way to boost those services, the CNet article quotes analysts who think Amazon will entice tablet makers into partnerships. Richard Windsor, global technology specialist for Nomura Securities, had this to say:

"I’m not convinced Amazon’s going to stay in the hardware business very long. Look at their business model–they are selling this thing at cost in order to make money on content. So if you can get someone else to make the tablet for you and sell it with your user experience on it, what do you care?"

I’m not so sure I can really see that, though. For one thing, if Amazon went into partnership with other tablet makers, those other makers certainly wouldn’t be able to sell them as cheaply as Amazon is selling the Fire. That would mean fewer people would buy them, which would in turn mean fewer people would buy Amazon’s content. And Amazon would lose some of its total control over the user experience, And as other analyses I’ve posted have shown, it’s not really clear whether Amazon is actually selling the Kindle Fire “at cost” to begin with.

Analysts will analyze and pundits will pund however they like, but I just can’t see Amazon rushing to change a system that is clearly working pretty well for the company already. It will keep making the Kindle apps available for all platforms, of course, but the Kindle Fire is the bait Amazon dangles to tempt consumers’ gadget lust. (My uncle, who already owns an e-ink Kindle and has been very happy with it, is already talking about selling it to get a Kindle Fire after falling in love with the one he got for his wife for Christmas.) I can’t see the company leaving that in someone else’s hands.

The Fusion Garage website only produces a database error, and Fusion Garage has not been responding to any requests for an update on the October 1 delivery date that came and went without the tablets being delivered. In fact, even Fusion Garage’s own PR firm has had such a hard time reaching the company that it has decided to cease representing it.

Of course, we don’t have anything other than the website’s error message—an error that TeleRead has itself thrown up on occasion (though our tireless IT staff quickly fixed it) and a lack of communication. Both of these things could change at any moment. However, the overdue tablet shipment does tend to make one want to assume the worst. I suspect the people who bought the original JooJoo tablet and were subsequently supposed to get a Grid 10 free are probably going to be disappointed.

Update: On his blog, Uncrunched, ex-TechCruncher Michael Arrington reports that Fusion Garage’s law firm is seeking permission from court to cease representing the company and withdraw from the legal case concerning the CrunchPad partnership with TechCrunch—because they haven’t had any contact (or payment) from the company in a long time, either.

(Found via CNet.)

Sounds like fun, but hopefully any parents who use this will first make sure their kids know to use fingers, not crayons or permanent markers. (And when did Crayola start using that creepy-looking mouth logo, anyway?)

Amazon, however, says that the Fire is its most successful product ever, and an Amazon spokesman has told the New York Times that it will be rolling out an over-the-air update in two weeks to address a number of customer complaints. Analysts are not raising or lowering their estimates that Amazon will sell three to five million Kindles this quarter.

Is the Fire going to blaze or fizzle? It’s too soon to tell—but I’m pretty sure Amazon will do everything in its power to blow on the coals.

The major change Amazon made was stripping a lot of stuff out of the operating system, the same way it stripped down the hardware. In fact, stripping down the hardware—leaving out things like the camera, accelerometer, or location services—is the major reason for what it pulled out of Android. Without the hardware, it doesn’t need the capabilities built into the operating system for using it.

This is also why Amazon left out access to the Android Market and other third-party app stores in favor of its own uniquely Fire-ized app sotre—apps that rely on access to camera, accelerometer, or location services have to be rewritten to pull those requirements out or they won’t work properly with the tablet.

One app that is one of our favorites is NHL Game Center 2011-12. It is a dynamic app that can show in (almost) real-time what is happening on the ice of an NHL game. We downloaded it through Getjar in hopes of checking scores and the download process was smooth. Yet, the thing with NHL Game Center is that it requests location services after registering what the users favorite team is. A message pops up along the lines of, "NHL Game Center could not find the location of the user, please turn on location in the settings" and promptly closes. There is no way around it. This severely curtails the type of apps that Amazon will allow to be used with the Fire.

This also means that, though users can easily root the device and install their own versions of Android on it, what they can do with it once they’ve done that may be rather limited.

Still, if you’re willing to work with these limitations and want the tablet for what it can do rather than what it can’t, the $200 price for the tablet seems like a winner.

Schonfeld reports that the Fire has become a favorite device in his family, with everyone trying to steal time on it. He goes over all of its major uses—reading, watching, listening, browsing, and playing—and concludes that the real attraction of the Fire is not the Fire itself, but the media it can bring to its owners.

People are not going to buy the Kindle Fire because of any of its specs. They are going to buy it because it eases them into the still-strange realm of digital books, movies, magazines, and apps. These are all media. The Fire makes it easy to find them and, more importantly, easy to pay for them. You hardly think twice about it.

It’s starting to look more and more like Amazon has a winning combination in the Fire and Prime. Its competitors are going to need to figure out how to match Amazon or else come up with their own competitive advantages.

It would appear to be halfway between a smartphone and a tablet. It reads ebooks but is that its main draw and in our opinion it fails on some basic counts. It is not a smartphone. Size wise it falls uncomfortably between the new smartphones and today’s tablets. The screen technology may now offer colour but anyone who has a Amoled screen will know this game has already been decided and the winner is here today. Finally the price is sitting on the high side of unattractive.

It seems a little puzzling to me just who would want a five- or six-inch device anyway. They’re a little bit too big to pocket easily, but not big enough to show even as much as a Kindle Fire can. And for the price, you could have a Kindle Fire instead with a hundred bucks left over for a year of Amazon Prime and an e-book or two. Is there really a market for this?

A couple of my friends picked up this tablet back in the day when it was more expensive and were very happy with it (once they’d jailbroken it). I don’t have the disposable income to snag one myself right now, alas, but don’t let that stop you if you do.

(Found via The Digital Reader.)

In the video, CNET’s Donald Bell refers to the Kindle Fire as a “good enough product”—essentially a device that will work well as an e-reader and media viewer for people who can’t afford an iPad, though not something you would want to “take to work and use as a laptop replacement.” The video points to CNET’s holiday gift guide for a more in-depth look at the various contenders.

The video is a bit shallow, but it’s interesting to see all the tablets held and used in the hands of the reviewers. It gives more of a feel for their size than just seeing them in pictures alone. It’s pretty obvious that e-readers and tablets will be an even hotter item this Christmas than last Christmas, and it will be interesting to see what the e-publishing landscape looks like next year after everyone who got them for Christmas starts using them.

The question on everyone’s mind is, of course, what kind of specs will a 9-inch Fire have? The current 7” version is decent for media consumption and games, but for more serious uses it’s not exactly going to set the world on…well, fire. If we’re going to pay extra for and carry around a bulkier, heavier device, I’d think it had better have a little more horsepower and utility.

But given how successful Amazon has been so far, I imagine it knows its own business best. It will be interesting to see what the device actually looks like when and if it does come out.