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Amazon tablet, touchscreen Kindle on course for H2, say moles

And a quad-core fondleslab from Asus

Unnamed industry moles say Amazon will have a tablet out in the second half of the year - cheaper Kindles too - and that Asus will release a slate based on Nvidia's upcoming quad-core Tegra chip.

Said sources were all cited by Taiwanese news site DigiTimes this week.

Assuming Nvidia's four-core 'Kal El' system-on-a-chip - which is yet to be formally announced - performs as promised, we can see plenty of other tablet makers taking it up.

Cores are to tablets what blades are to razors: expect competing vendors to cram as many in as they can, as soon as they are able, whether there's any real benefit to the user or not.

The latest take on Amazon's tablet plans come from sources within companies that make the components that may be used in the manufacture of the devices, rather than from the maker itself, said to be Taiwan's Quanta.

Even so, they say Quanta will be begin shipping tablets to Amazon during H2 2011, part of a $3.5bn (£2.1bn) order.

The tablet will go up against the likes of the iPad 2, while the current Kindle - due to become even cheaper, the moles claim, though this may be a reference to the recently released ads-supported version - targets folk who want something less expensive than a tablet, or just want to read e-books.

It has been claimed separately that the next Kindle will feature a touch-sensitive E Ink screen of the kind already found on Sony's Readers. ®

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