Amazon tablet rumors are flying fast and furious these days. A new report Thursday from Taiwan-based supply chain scoop sniffer DigiTimes may only serve to muddy the waters regarding the online retail giant's plans to take on Apple's iPad with a touch screen device of its own before the year is out.
The crux of the DigiTimes report is that Amazon has contracted with Kindle assembler Foxconn to put together 10.1-inch tablets for a release date sometime in 2012, while Quanta Computer is now shipping a 7-inch tablet to the online retailer.
At first blush, the rumored deal with Foxconn on a 10.1-inch tablet for 2012 doesn't jibe with this week's report from The Wall Street Journal that Amazon will have a 9-inch device with an outsourced design ready for release before October of this year.
But as TechCrunch points out, the 9-inch tablet reportedly arriving in the third quarter could be "a sort of placeholder" for a larger model that Amazon plans to design itself and release next year.
In that sense, both the Journal's article and the DigiTimes report could be on the money.
What's a bit more confusing is the part in the DigiTimes report from Thursday about a 7-inch Amazon tablet being assembled by Quanta Computer. ZDNet's Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has cited sources who have identified Quanta as the maker of the Amazon tablet, so that much is consistent. The trouble is, Vaughan-Nichols' sources seem to be referring to the 9-inch tablet identified in the Journal report from Wednesday.
Here again, there may be an answer that indicates both reports are correct, though it takes some digging through the growing backlog of Amazon tablet rumors to find it.
Back in May, Boy Genius Report cited sources who claimed Amazon was readying not one, but two tablets for release in the second half of 2011—specifically, a more powerful model codenamed Hollywood (the 9-inch tablet named by the Journal?) and an "entry-level" version codenamed Coyote (the 7-inch device identified by DigiTimes?)
So here's the skinny, as far as we can tell: Putting together all the different rumors and assuming that everybody's information is more or less accurate, it sure looks like Amazon has not one, not two, but in fact three separate tablets in the offing.
First, there would be two color, multi-touch tablets running Google's Android Honeycomb 3.1, designed and assembled by Quanta and set for a September release—the 7-inch Coyote tablet with Nvidia's dual-core Tegra 2 chip, and the 9-inch Hollywood tablet, powered by either the dual-core Tegra 2 or perhaps by the upcoming quad-core "Kal-El" chip from Nvidia.
The third rumored tablet is the mysterious Amazon-designed, Foxconn-assembled 10.1-inch device mentioned by DigiTimes' sources. Not due out until 2012, this tablet would likely sport Nvidia's Kal-El processor and run a more advanced version of Android.