Shipments for the first quarter of 2012 slipped all the way down to just 700,000 units, which is a mere fraction of what Amazon enjoyed during Q4 of last year. Naturally, a big part of this has to do with holiday gift buying, but Amazon still wants to sell as many of these puppies as it can. And that’s why several Amazon local deals are popping up with $30 off coupons, bringing the price of the Kindle Fire down to just $169.

Of course, Amazon isn’t really out to make money from the hardware; they’re in the business of selling you content for that e-reading tablet. So, should Amazon need to compete with a $199 Google Nexus 7 tablet, I wouldn’t be surprised if the online e-tailer giant decided to slash prices even further. My fingers are crossed for a $99 Kindle Fire, but I think a $149 semi-permanent price point could prove likely.

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Rumors about a so-called Nexus tablet from Google have been flying around for a while. What you see above comes to us from Pocketnow and the pictured device is purported to be the search giant’s upcoming tablet. Could it be the cheap stock Android Nexus tablet meant to compete against the new iPad?

As we reported earlier, the Nexus tablet (or whatever it will be called, if it’s coming that is) is expected to have a 7-inch display and will be coming from Asus sometime this summer. If this is indeed the Nexus tablet that we are looking at, it looks more like a ten-inch slate.

It looks like it has some qualities of an upcoming Google tablet. The generic Ice Cream Sandwich OS is displaying only official ICS and Google apps; there are no third party apps or widgets visible.

But, anyone who is an expert in Photoshop can create such an image very accurately, and also we are suspicious about the presence of the Android Market icon instead of the Google Play Store (yes, it could mean that it’s an older render too). The folks over at Pocketnow are also not talking about a source. That does not mean that the image is a fake, but the image does not provide us with any good evidence to prove that it is real.

There are no hints about specs, price or the release date, but previous rumors point towards a device with a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor and a $199 price tag.

Just to let you know, Android Community is saying that the above device looks similar to the 7.7-inch Tegra 3 tablet from Toshiba which was shown off at CES.

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It’s pretty much a done deal that the Nexus Tablet will be of the seven-inch variety and it could largely similar to the Asus MeMo 370T, but we had previously heard inklings that it would be powered by the new NVIDIA Tegra3 quad-core processor. In order to achieve the $149 target price, though, it’s said that Google will scrap that idea for a much less expensive dual core processor, possibly a Snapdragon unit from Qualcomm. Even so, they’re promising a “tablet of the highest quality,” whatever that means.

For now, it seems that the so-called Nexus Tablet could make its official debut at CTIA Wireless in New Orleans. That takes place from May 8 to May 10, which is less than two months away. Considering that Nexus devices are usually used as launching points for new versions of Android, it’s also possible that Jelly Bean (Android 4.1? Android 5.0?) could make its debut at the same time, though a Jelly Bean reveal at Google IO on June 27-29 could prove to be more likely.

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And now the Android tablet world is being struck with another hurdle. Yes, the new iPad is all nice and shiny with its Retina Display, but the iPad 2 is sticking around and it’s getting a price cut. The 16Gb Wi-Fi model is now going to sell for just $399, making it the same price as a reduced price Sony Tablet S and making it cheaper than many Android tablets.

That’s gotta sting. For the average consumer, when they are faced with choosing between a $399 iPad 2 and a $399 Motorola Xoom, you know they’re going to lean toward the Apple side of the table. Remember that this is an entirely different proposition than the $199 Kindle Fire, but the upcoming Nexus Tablet, if it does indeed launch at $199 with Tegra 3 and ICS, could upset the balance again. For the time being, though, it looks like Apple will continue to gobble up the lion’s share of the market, even if it didn’t have to change things all over again, again.

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Early rumors said that Samsung might be building the Nexus Tablet, since it was the one that built the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus. Then, we thought it might be LG or, because of the newfound relationship, it might be Motorola. The current rumors are pointing toward Asus as the current leading candidate.

The rest of the speculation still appears to be holding true with the upcoming Nexus tablet boasting a pure Ice Cream Sandwich experience with a 7-inch display and a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor. Considering that the 7-inch Asus MeMo tablet was brought down to $249, the $199 target price for the Nexus Tablet–which could be called the Google Play or maybe the Nexus Play–looks within reach. We’re expecting production to start next month with a launch to follow in June.

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There are all kinds of rumors swirling around that Google is preparing a self-branded Android tablet, but apparently it’s not joining the Nexus family. Instead, it could be called the Google “Play” tablet. I imagine the boys and girls in Waterloo aren’t very happy about that, but at the same time, they’ve got some much bigger fish to fry at the moment.

It seems that Google has gone around and registered a number of domain names that have the word “play” in them. This might have to do with the tablet, or perhaps some sort of new software related to it, or maybe it has to do with something else entirely. What we do hear is that production could start as early as next month and the “Play” tablet could be a 7-incher preloaded with ICS. I wonder how Amazon feels about that.

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