Amazon is debuting its first tablet offering for kids via its Amazon Fire HD Kids Edition.
Amazon also announced new Fire HD 6 and Fire HD 7 tablets, offering rather good specs at a very affordable price.
"It's a core tenet of Amazon: Price matters," said Dave Limp, senior vice president of Amazon.com's hardware business. "Our goal there is to pack as much processing power into as low a price as we can."
The Fire HD Kids Edition has the same 6-inch or 7-inch display as the Fire HD tablets, but it is has a heavy-duty case as well as parental controls. It also comes with a year's free subscription to FreeTime Unlimited, giving access to over 5,000 books, movies, TV shows, apps, games and so on. All of these are aimed at children between the ages of 3 and 10 years old.
Parental controls include the ability to block access to the Amazon store, as well as the ability to limit how many hours are spent using the tablet per day. The device also comes with a two-year warranty to replace it if it breaks, no questions asked.
"If your child breaks your tablet, you get a new one. It's that simple," said Nate Glissmeyer, director of Amazon Devices.
The new Fire HD tablets have a number of great hardware features, including a quad-core processor and both front and rear-facing cameras, which is nice for a device at this price point. According to Amazon, the tablets also offer three times the graphics performance of the entry-level Samsung tablet, the Galaxy Tab 4.
The 6-inch Fire HD costs just $99, while the 7-inch one brings the price up to $139, which is still a lot cheaper than many other 7-inch tablets on the market. The Kids editions of each respective tablet will sell for $50 more, with the 6-inch device selling for $149 and the 7-inch for $189.
There are a number of reasons that Amazon is able to keep its prices so low. The main factor in the price is Amazon's focus on content, which is worth a lot more money to the company than hardware.
"A lot of our customers are focused on us inventing," continued Limp. "To invent often requires a higher price point because you are going to try to push the edge of technology."
Amazon also introduced a number of new Kindle devices, including one device that looks and even feels like real paper.
