We've known for some time that 
Amazon yesterday announced that it had sold out of its Kindle Fire tablet, ending a nine-month run for the popular 7-inch slate. There were two things of note in the press release. First, company founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, added fuel to speculation that an upgraded second generation Kindle Fire tablet is en route when he said Amazon has "an amazing roadmap ahead." Second, Amazon made the claim that Kindle Fire had captured 22 percent of tablet sales in the U.S. Exactly how many tablets is that, anyway?
It's incredibly tough to keep a product launch under wraps with the Internet serving as the ultimate spoiler. Samsung can attest to this after seeing its Galaxy Note II plans leaked to the Web ahead of its offical launch. Be that as it may, all a company can do is forge ahead with business as usual, as Samsung did by officially unveiling its second generation Galaxy Note device. There is one surprise, however -- Samsung's skipping a U.S. launch until later this year.
IFA Berlin is in full swing and we're starting to see a number of Windows 8 product announcements emerge. One of them is Toshiba's Satellite U925t convertible tablet, or "tablet meets Ultrabook," as the company describes it. Sleek and slim, the Satellite U925t looks every bit a tablet, but a slide out QWERTY keyboard quickly transforms it into a makeshift Ultrabook with some pretty impressive hardware inside.
We don't know if Acer is still sulking in the corner over having to compete with Microsoft in the Windows 8 tablet arena, but one company that isn't is Asus. Instead, Asus today unveiled its Viva Tab and Viva Tab RT tablets (formerly known as as Asus Tablet 810 and 600, respectively). Both models are dual-purpose tablets built to run Windows 8/RT with a detachable QWERTY keyboard dock.
Rumor has it the iPad Mini -- a smaller, 7.85-inch version of the iPad tablet -- is real and nearly ready to ship. It's the type of device the late Steve Jobs never approved of, having once unaffectionately referred to 7-inch tablets as "tweeners," and slides into a trending category of mobile products currently led by Amazon's Kindle Fire, Google's Nexus 7, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet (not necessarily in that order).
Exactly two weeks from today -- September 6, 2012, if you don't want to consult a calendar -- Amazon will hold a press conference in Santa Monica, California, according to invitations it sent out to members of the press. It's a safe bet Amazon will launch a new wave of Kindle products during that time, and if the e-tailer plans on releasing a full size Kindle Fire tablet, could there be a better time?
If the choice is to go big or go home, Microsoft is opting for the former with its Surface tablet strategy. Much to the chagrin of Acer and other hardware partners who wish Microsoft would bow out of the tablet race completely, the Redmond software giant is reportedly gearing up to the splash the mobile market with more than 3 million Surface devices to be sold through its own retail store locations and other outlets.
No matter how much we'd like it to happen, Microsoft probably isn't going to launch Surface starting a mere $199, as has been 
You know how pessimists like to point out that if something is too good to be true, then it probably is? As much as we hate to admit it, that idiom most likely applies to a recent rumor suggesting Microsoft finalized plans to price its Windows RT-based Surface tablet at a mere $199. It's fun to speculate on what kind of impact that would have on the tablet market, but at the end of the day, all that rhetoric would be for naught because it's just not going to happen, according to several analysts.
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