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Is Amazon working on an Android Kindle?

Is Amazon working on an Android Kindle?

By Nick Bilton NYT | Updated: 5 June 2012 02:18 IST

Highlights

Amazon has been incredibly successful with its Kindle e-reader, offering a lightweight reader at an affordable price. But the pizazz of the iPad 2 and the dozens of Android-based tablets that are slowly making their way off of conveyor belts and onto stor

Amazon has been incredibly successful with its Kindle e-reader, offering a lightweight reader at an affordable price. But the pizazz of the iPad 2 and the dozens of Android-based tablets that are slowly making their way off of conveyor belts and onto store shelves is rekindling a number of unanswered questions about the next generation of Amazon's e-reader.

First and foremost, will Amazon finally release a full color Kindle? If the company decides to go down the color rabbit hole, what operating system will it choose? And finally, will it still be primarily an e-reader, or will a color Kindle compete with other tablets on the market by offering e-mail, more immersive apps and video.

Although Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, has said in the past that a color Kindle is "multiple years" away, new job listings on the Lab 126 Web site, the division of Amazon that makes the Kindle, show that the company is building up its team of Android developers, which might involve developing software for a color screen.

At least five new jobs were added in the last week alone seeking developers with Android programming experience.

Now this could simply mean that Amazon is hiring engineers to work on new software for other Android devices. But it could also pave the way for a Kindle that runs Android, which would in turn be a color device. The current Kindle runs the Linux operating system.

It's still up for debate whether an Android Kindle would be good for Amazon, or better for Google. With tablets becoming a competition over the number of apps available for the platform, Amazon would have a lot of catching up to do if the company decided to introduce an entirely new tablet operating system.

What do you think? Should Amazon join forces with Google and develop an Android Kindle, or should the company stick to its own platform?

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Further reading: Amazon, Kindle, android phones, e-reader, iPad2

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