Amazon Partners With Baidu Inc to Launch Fire Tablet in China

Amazon introduced the $50 Fire tablet back in September, initially shipping only to the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, France, Italy, and Spain.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) said today that it had debuted its Fire tablet in China and had formed a partnership with Baidu Inc. It’s also putting a device on sale in China for the first time, so there’s plenty of news out of the Washington-based company.

Scientists have said that blue light makes it harder to sleep – sunlight contains a lot of it – and the new feature will filter this out and enable the brain to keep a more natural sleep pattern, Amazon says. Once enabled users can choose the brightness level that’s best for them.

The move is just Amazon’s latest attempt to break into a massive but challenging market that it so far hasn’t been able to figure out. It has an updated activity center displaying web history, games played, time spent on reading, use of apps and other related activities. All sites available are curated by Amazon to ensure that they meet general parental standards.

By introducing the Fire Tablet to China, the company stands to gain revenues from both hardware sales as well as those from apps and services: Amazon earns a portion of digital sales through its website, Kindle bookstore and video offerings. The Kindle e-reader is already available in China and Amazon has sold more than a million devices.

Customer Anu Garg of Seattle, Washington uses a Kindle table device at the newly-opened Amazon Books store on November 4, 2015 in Seattle, Washington. “With tools and features like Word Wise and Blue Shade, plus a large selection of Chinese and English content, we think readers will love the new Fire tablet”. It will sell for RMB 499 Yuan, or roughly $80 United States dollars.