Online retailer Amazon is said to be preparing two new tablet devices, a 7-inch model and a 10-inch one, both being timed to be launched in the second half of the year.

This, according to Steve Shen and Siu Han from Digitimes, could "cast a shadow on the future development of e-book readers", citing unnamed industry sources and pointing to the fact that Amazon has apparently reduced demand for e-paper products from E Ink Holdings as the latter announced revenue drops of 62 per cent year on year and nearly a quarter month on month.

The success of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet - which is based on the same blueprint as the RIM BlackBerry Playbook - means that Amazon has apparently shifted its focus to the more lucrative tablet devices with a 10-inch device - rather than an 8.9-inch one - sitting nicely in the game plan.

Amazon is said to source touch panels from Wintek and TPK holdings with production of the 10-inch model being secured by usual suspects Quanta Computer and Foxconn Electronics.

The current Kindle tablet comes with a 7-inch 1,024 by 600 pixels capacitive display with a dual core TI OMAP4430 SoC clocked at 1GHz and 8GB onboard storage. It has yet to be sold outside the US.