Will Amazon’s New Kindle Fire Offer Free 3G Data?

267 days ago by 15

Next Thursday (Sept. 6th) is looking to be a big day for Amazon.  They’ve been sending out invites to a “special” press conference that will held at an airport hangar in Santa Monica, California.  The content of the invite, of course, doesn’t allude to what Amazon has up its sleeve, they only say “Please join us for an Amazon Press Conference.”  News is out today that Amazon will be delaying the release of the 10 inch Kindle Fire.  So that rules out an announcement for the larger form factor tablet.  It would only make sense then that we’ll seen an update version of the Kindle Fire.  But what does updated mean exactly?

I’d like to believe it means free 3G data.  Yeah, that would be a huge step for Amazon – for any company really – but if you think about, it makes perfect sense.  Amazon’s money maker isn’t in selling hardware (i.e. the Kindle Fire tablet), but in the software and content that’s accessible via the Kindle Fire.  And what better way to open up the flood gates to Amazon’s ocean of content than to offer free 3G?  Free 3G on the Kindle Fire would make it a no brain’er to subscribe to Amazon Prime – Amazon’s subscription based program that offers free unlimited streaming of TV shows, movies, and free 2 day shipping on millions of products.  What do you think?  Is it possible we’ll see free 3G on the next generation Kindle Fire tablet?

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  • old geek

    Whispernet type service bundled with a device makes sense and could offset superior hardware from others. I don’t believe the other rumors that say Amazon will not be offering a larger Kindle Fire. If it isn’t 10″ it will be larger than 7″

    • http://TabletCrunch.com/ Tablet Crunch

      If anyone’s going to offer free 3G on a device it would be Amazon. After all, their business model is generating revenue from their content so they are always looking for innovative ways to make it easier for customers to consume more content – and of course, easier to purchase more products (easier and faster).

      Plus, if they come out with free 3G it will completely revolutionize the mobile market and could quite possibly solidify the Kindle Fire as the dominant #2 tablet.

      But then again, Google could just as easily launch free 3G but they just don’t have the content revenue stream that Amazon does so it would be much more difficult for Google to pull it off.

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  • DocSavage

    The content of the invite, of course, doesn’t elude to what Amazon has up its sleeve. . .

    I think you mean ‘allude”. LOL. Sorry, it’s the editor in me.

    • http://TabletCrunch.com/ Tablet Crunch

      oh wow… you don’t know how much I appreciate your feedback. Most of the time, I just get hammered in the comments by the grammar police.

      I’m always looking for people to help me with the grammar / editing of my articles.

      • DocSavage

        Lighten up. it was just a joke. Sorry I offended you. and it was an interesting story. I heard someone mention it around the office and yours was the only article i found that mentioned it.

      • DocSavage

        Lighten up. It was just a joke. Sorry I offended you. Not my intention. It was an interesting article. I heard someone talking about it in the office and yours was the first article I found on it.

        • http://TabletCrunch.com/ Tablet Crunch

          Ummm…… I was thanking you for the help – not getting upset at you! Really? Did my comment come across as negative?

          • DocSavage

            okay, I’m an idiot. yeah, it did to me, but I was wrong. So much for my innate ability to edit and understand the writer’s intent. I owe you an apology. Sorry.
            No more cracking wise for me until I’ve been on the site longer.

            Then I’ll offer my editing services to you for free. at least for a couple of articles anyway. :-) fair enough?

  • Thugdrummer

    I imagine if Amazon does offer free 3G service on the Kindle Fire, it will probably have something similar to the 50MB cap they have on the current Kindle 3G models. After you pass the cap on those, you’re access is restricted to Amazon’s Kindle store, and Wikipedia. They may come up with different cap/restrictions because it’s the Fire, but I doubt they are willing to foot the bill for Gigabytes of total internet access. The whole point of Whispernet is to get you to buy more Amazon products. Why would they pay for you to stream movies?

  • Some Guy

    This is all speculation here, but if you do the rough math on what it would require to have a high-bandwidth device like a Kindle Fire, sucking up movies and TV, work for free on 3G (unlike an e-ink kindle which consumes files in the kilobytes), it’d be crazy expensive for Amazon to subsidize that. I just can’t see them providing any bandwidth for free, unless they did it as a trial subscription product like Prime. But until we have much higher capacity city-wide wireless networks out there, no one is going to offer free bandwidth for a high consumption device. The numbers just don’t work out, and most existing networks are already under tremendous strain from smart phones alone, let alone a kindle fire downloading Game of Thrones episodes over it.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/bethel.welch.7 Bethel Welch

    If it does then they win the war:) but that is too expensive to handle. By the way if there’s still want the first kindle fire you can get it here before it run out: http://www.squidoo.com/kindle-fire-on-sale-deals-discounts-promos-codes

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