Kindle Fire HD

Amazon has launched Whispercast for Kindle, a new mass-deployment and management system for ebooks - and soon apps - on Kindles and Kindle apps for schools and businesses. Intended to allow Kindle titles to be bought and shared out among students and employees, as well as remotely control device passwords, wireless settings, and what titles can be purchased. Meanwhile, Amazon says Whispercast for Kindle will soon be able to handle distributing and managing Kindle Fire applications.

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Amazon makes no profit on its Kindle hardware sales, CEO Jeff Bezos has confirmed, with the ereaders and Kindle Fire tablets sold "at our cost" so as to promote ebook, video, and music downloads. The online retailer has long been tight-lipped on its pricing strategy around Kindle, with ongoing rumors that the hardware was sold with minimum profit in mind or, even, at a loss. That's not quite the case, Bezos told the BBC.

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Amazon unveiled the Kindle Fire HD last month as its new high-end tablet offering. That unveiling took place before the FCC had approved the Kindle Fire HD packing 4G technology for sale within the United States. Amazon had previously promised to send people who pre-ordered the 4G version of the tablet an e-mail to confirm their order when the tablet was approved by the FCC.

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The tablet market is heating up, and for once it's not Apple, or Google, or Samsung doing the shaking, but booksellers Barnes & Noble. The new NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ may carry the same name as B&N tablets of before, but they're worlds apart in hardware and clarity of software ecosystem. Not content to chase Amazon and Apple on price alone, there's an apparently legitimate attempt on B&N's part to tune each model to the audience most likely to be interested in it, rather than chasing some imaginatively aspirational but likely non-existent "perfect" consumer.

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We've had a rather interesting Tuesday here at SlashGear, thanks in no small part to RIM. The company held its BlackBerry Jam today, introducing us to new BlackBerry 10 features like Peek and Flow. We also learned that BlackBerry 10 will come with support for your favorite social networks, even offering a native Facebook app. Carrier testing on the new mobile OS will begin next month, and RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said that BlackBerry has a good shot at becoming number three behind Android and iOS.

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Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablet has only been available commercially for the better part of a week, and new reports are already coming out showing just how stiff their competition will be against Google's Nexus 7. The popular ad tracking and analysis firm Chitika just released some new data showing the Fire's already taking 11% of all Kindle Fire web share, but that the Nexus 7 is much higher.

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The online retail giant Amazon has a huge audience for selling their tablets and Kindle eReaders on the web, but when you don't have a storefront you'll take all the help you can get. In terms of brick and mortar stores there's only a handful of opportunities for Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD tablet -- and today they're losing a big one.

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Last year Amazon entered the tablet and hardware market on an entirely different level with their Kindle Fire tablet. Now just 10 short months later we have a completely evolved product from the retail giant. Today we're taking a look at the new Kindle Fire HD 7-inch tablet. Everything you didn't like about the original (including that Playbook styling) has been improved for round two so lets take a look and see how it does.

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Welcome to Monday evening, folks. Today, we entered the final few days before the iPhone 5 releases, and we found out that the device has netted 2 million pre-orders in its first 24 hours of availability. Some of those same pre-orders began shipping out from China over the weekend, and AT&T is claiming that the iPhone 5 is the most successful iPhone launch ever, which everyone could have probably already guessed. We take a look at the iPhone 5's already astounding success, while Samsung was busy comparing the iPhone 5 to the Galaxy S III in a new ad that was rolled out over the weekend.

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Shortly before the reveal of Amazon's new line up of Kindle Fire tablets - including a refresh of the original Kindle Fire and the new Kindle Fire HD - we heard whispers that the company was joining forces with Nokia for its mapping service. The rumor didn't come as much of a surprise, considering that Amazon has cut Google out of the loop considerably with its Kindle Fire line, but today is the first time we've received confirmation that Amazon has indeed licensed Nokia's Location Platform.

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The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 - that being the 7-inch display toting version of the tablet experience - has received its first official teardown, straight from the folks at iFixit. This teardown shows a rather clean looking construction complete with the Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 dual-core processor powering the whole beast - the first big note here is the fact that the machine has a 1.2Ghz processor though TI claims it'll operate at up to 1.5Ghz. Also under the hood you'll find a Texas Instruments TWL6032 Fully Integrated Power Management IC and Samsung KLMAG2GE4A eMMC 16 GB Flash Memory and Flash Memory Controller as well.

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Amazon has launched a new Maps API for Kindle Fire developers, challenging Google's own Android mapping services, and further shifting the Kindle-branded tablets away from pure Android. Quietly added to the range of options for third-party developers alongside the launch of the Kindle Fire HD, the Amazon Maps API support custom overlays of data on top of standard mapping, with customized pins and markets for business, landmarks, and other notable positions.

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