Amazon has launched its first ever tablet in the Chinese market.
The online retail giant has made the Amazon Fire tablet available in China. It initially launched in the West back in September with an eye-catching £50 price tag.
With a price of 499 RMB, the Amazon Fire is pretty much identically priced in this new market.
Amazon has had to find a new search engine partner for the China launch. Google is unable to operate in the country, so Amazon is partnering with top Chinese search engine Baidu to help power its tablet.
Baidu will also provide apps through its 91Wireless Android app store, as well as online video through iQiyi – China’s second biggest online video service.
Amazon doesn’t enjoy anything like the same market position as it enjoys in the US and UK over in China. As TechCrunch points out, its online retail business is well behind such local giants as Alibaba and JD.com.
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It will be interesting, then, to see how the Amazon Fire tablet fares in China – especially as its low price is nothing special in a market filled with affordable, decent-quality Android tablets.
Still, the extensive backing of China’s top search engine should at least start the Amazon Fire tablet off on something like a level playing field.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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