Along with Amazon’s big tablet announcements earlier today , it’s finally also unveiled the first markets to get the Kindle Fire tablets — both the new Kindle Fire and the HD version — outside of the U.S.
The news first trickled out in a forum announcement on Amazon.co.uk, which also announced availability of the new Kindle e-reader.
This is announcement is more significant than Amazon finally answering questions of when it would launch these tablets internationally. It’s a sign that it is getting ready to turn the taps on full and really start getting some global scale to their device operation.
The Kindle readers have already been a big hit in markets where they have launched, and so launching the tablets, at competitive price points, will be Amazon’s first crack at truly upsetting the global balance for the tablet market, which has basically been dominated by Apple and the iPad, with very little headway from any single Android-based tablet vendor. Until, possibly, now.
“Last year there were more than two dozen Android tablets launched into the marketplace, and nobody bought them,” CEO Jeff Bezos boasted earlier today in the presentation in Santa Monica.