Amazon 10-inch tablet PC to start mass production in 1Q12
Mass production of Amazon's 10.1-inch tablet PC reportedly will be conducted in the first quarter of 2012 with Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) to handle the orders, according to sources from upstream component suppliers.
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon's hardware push has been building all summer: the Wall Street Journal reported in July 2011 that Amazon planned a tablet by October, and a follow-on report suggested it would use a cheaper two-finger touchscreen rather than iPad-style multi-touch to stay price-competitive. This DigiTimes piece adds the supply-chain layer: upstream component suppliers say a larger 10.1-inch model follows in Q1 2012, with Foxconn handling assembly.
The sourcing matters because Foxconn sits on both sides of the tablet war — its Innolux affiliate was named back in 2009 as a panel supplier for Apple's tablet — so the rumor, if it holds, puts the same manufacturing complex behind both the iPad and its most credible commerce-and-content challenger. Both the Q1 2012 timing and the Foxconn award remain unconfirmed supplier talk.
First-order effects
- Foxconn gains a second flagship tablet account alongside Apple, and upstream component suppliers begin quoting capacity for a 10.1-inch panel-and-touch stack targeted at Q1 2012 production.
Second-order effects
- Rivals that detailed their own slates earlier — Asustek among them per its 2010 roadmap — now face an entrant whose pricing power comes from Kindle-store economics rather than hardware margin, pressuring 10-inch Android tablet price points.
- Panel and touch-module makers see demand fragmenting across more large-format tablet programs, strengthening their hand in allocation negotiations as Apple, Amazon, and PC vendors compete for the same Q1 2012 lines.
Third-order effects
- If content-and-commerce companies keep contracting the same EMS giants that build Apple's devices, tablet manufacturing consolidates around a handful of Taiwanese assemblers serving every side of the platform fight — echoing how Microsoft's exit from e-book reading apps confirmed that the market had already narrowed to Amazon and Apple.
The trend: Media and commerce platforms are entering the tablet market through the same contract manufacturers that build the iPad, turning device assembly into shared infrastructure for competing ecosystems.