Amazon said on Wednesday that it's slashing the price of its Kindle Fire HD 8.9 tablets (opens in new tab). The Wi-Fi version now has a starting price of $269, down from $299, and the 4G version has a starting price of $399, down from $499. Of course, for the versions without Amazon's "special offers", the starting prices are $284 and $414 respectively.
In addition to lowering the prices in the United States, Amazon has launched the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 tablets in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Dave Limp, Vice President of the Amazon Kindle division, claims that by expanding into these areas, the company is able to increase production volumes and thus decrease its costs.
"Across our business at Amazon, whenever we are able to create cost efficiencies like this, we want to pass the savings along to our customers," he said.
Amazon's 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet arrived in North America on November 20, 2012, the company's second-generation Android tablet. It packs a 1.5 GHz dual-core TI OMAP4470 SoC with a 299 MHz PowerVR SGX544 graphics core, 1 GB of RAM, dual-band Wireless N and Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity, up to 64 GB of internal storage, and a 1920 x 1200 resolution.
The tablet's launch also introduced new Amazon services like X-Ray for Movies, X-Ray for Textbooks, Immersion Reading, Whispersync for Voice and Whispersync for Games. It also includes Kindle FreeTime, a free, personalized tablet experience just for kids and exclusively available on Kindle Fire. Parents can set daily screen limits and give access to appropriate content for each child.
"We’re thrilled with customer reaction to Kindle Fire HD 8.9," Dave Limp said. "Customers tell us they love our large-screen version of Kindle Fire HD for web browsing, email, gaming, watching TV shows, reading magazines, and more."
To get Amazon's Kindle Fire HD 8.9 at the new lower price, head here (opens in new tab).
