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Kindle Fire Coming to the UK Soon? Bollocks, I Say

So the rumor of the international Kindle Fire has reared its head again, and this time the tablet is coming to Great Britain. The Register is inventing the rumor this time around, and they’re saying that the Kindle Fire will be coming to the UK soonish. Amazon already has a solid market presence in DVD and  video, via their LoveFilm subsidiary, so this isn’t such a stretch.

But I think they’re grasping at straws. They’re basing the rumor on a keynote address (and interview) by an Amazon VP at MipTV, a UK video industry conference. I’ve seen the keynote, and I think they’re misinterpreting it. This is how they described Anthony Bay’s comments:

He hinted at a European and wider international launch for Kindle Fire very soon and believed it would be driving higher video consumption. “The Kindle team would describe it as a content-forward strategy. When you turn on the Kindle, it goes right to the books. And when you turn on the Kindle Fire, it goes right to whatever you’ve been watching or listening to.” 45% of Amazon’s revenue now comes outside of the US.

The video is embedded at the end of the post, and I’d suggest that if you want to get a better idea of Amazon’s presence in the UK, go watch it.

I did, and Anthony doesn’t actually imply that the Kindle Fire is coming any time soon. He was explicitly asked about an international launch of the Kindle Fire (at the 19:30 mark), and he does not give a definite answer. What he really says is "stay tuned". That is by no means a promise to launch the KF in the UK. It is at best a suggestion that Amazon would like to sell the KF in the UK, but we could have already guessed that.

As I recall, the last time that the Kindle Fire was mentioned as being launched outside the US, the rumor placed it in France. It was supposed to have launched last week at an Amazon press event. It didn’t; instead Amazon announced that the French and other Kindle Stores were going to carry the Kindle Touch in stock, thus cutting out the need to order it from the US.

While I do believe that Amazon is planning to launch the Kindle Fire outside the US, this particular rumor is bollocks.

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