Amazon announces a new $50 tablet that it's selling in six-packs for a discount
Called simply Fire tablet, the new device costs only $49.99 and Amazon will sell six-packs for $250, meaning that when you buy your tablets like you'd buy your beer, you'll get one for free.
"It was definitely inspired by PBR," an Amazon exec joked at the company's briefing for the product.
This is Amazon's cheapest tablet ever, and the company says it's "setting an entirely new standard for a tablet under $50." The 7-inch device has a quad-core processor and twice the processing power of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite, which costs more than $100. Amazon says that it's also is nearly twice as durable the latest iPad Air (though the device, which runs a forked version of Android, doesn't have as high-quality of a display or as fast of a processor as the Apple tablet, which starts at $399). Amazon hasn't revealed how much storage is available on the tablet, but it says the device has up to 128 GB of memory thanks to a microSD card reader.
With the six-pack packaging, Amazon clearly envisions that this new tablet will sell like hotcakes during the upcoming holiday season.
The Amazon exec leading the demo said that the company can even envision people buying them for single use-cases, like setting alarms or watching TV in their kitchen, because the devices are so dirt-cheap.
Of course, the company's decision to make low-end tablets and then sell them at break-even prices boils down to Amazon's strategy of ultimately making money when device owners become "better" Amazon customers.
"Our thesis is that if they're using the tablet, we gain our profitability from that," the exec said.
You can preorder the devices today, and they'll start shipping in about two weeks.