Amazon Might Launch New 7-inch and 9-inch Kindle Fire Tablets Mid-Year

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet continue to sell like hotcakes, assuming hotcakes sell like, well, Kindle Fire devices. The point is Amazon successfully launched a 7-inch competitor to the iPad and all the also-rans in the tablet space, so if you're Amazon, what do you do for a second act? Launch a bigger version, of course.

According to Pacific Crest analyst Chad Bartley, Amazon is indeed getting ready to launch a larger size Kindle Fire device, along with a refreshed 7-inch model.

"We are raising our 2012 sales forecasts to 14.9 million from 12.7 million. But we believe there is an upward bias, particularly from the new 7- and 9-inch models, which we expect to launch in mid-2012," Bartley wrote in a note to investors.

A full-size or nearly full-size tablet version of the Kindle Fire could spice things up, especially if Amazon is again aggressive with pricing. To do that, however, it would probably have to omit certain features. The existing Kindle Fire, for example, sells for just $199 but doesn't have a microSD card slot, front- or rear-facing cameras, a microphone, 3G connectivity, HDMI output, or even Bluetooth. Some of these may find their way onto second generation Fire devices, but it's hard to imagine all of them will.