Also: HP board faces a critical vote; Adobe CTO leaves for Apple.
According to what we’ve heard, the $99 Kindle Fire HD will also still sport a TI processor like the rest of the lineup, and will have a 1280×800 resolution, like today’s Kindle Fire HD 7″ does.
This report follows an announcement Amazon made earlier this month about reduced prices on its Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ devices. The Wi-Fi-only version will now cost $269, down from $299, while the LTE version dropped from $499 to $399. It also follows news of a forthcoming carrier billing deal that’s about to go live – something which hints that Amazon is now scaling up and becoming more aggressive with its product line up.
Update: An Amazon spokesperson denies the rumor. “We are already at the lowest price points possible for that hardware.”
HP board faces critical vote [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
The controversial acquisition of Autonomy tops the list of H-P shareholder gripes. Mr. Apotheker, H-P’s former CEO, was the main cheerleader of that deal, but the directors who picked him to lead the company and then later approved the Autonomy deal are now under fire.
Executive Chairman Ray Lane is facing opposition to his re-election, along with veteran Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen, from proxy advisory firms.
The two are expected to survive the firms’ negative recommendations to shareholders, but two other directors— John Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson—appear to be vulnerable as H-P faces investors still steaming over blunders during Mr. Apotheker’s short time in the top job.
BlackBerry Z10 review: A noble failure [CNNMONEY]
BlackBerry needed a phone that could stand up against any other new device. But this is not a flagship phone. It’s a device anyone else would be giving away for free with a two-year contract by the end of the year. And for BlackBerry, that obviously is not enough.
Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch headed to Apple [ALLTHINGSD]
“Kevin Lynch, Adobe CTO, is leaving the company effective March 22 to take a position at Apple,” an Adobe spokesperson told AllThingsD. “We will not be replacing the CTO position; responsibility for technology development lies with our business unit heads under the leadership of Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Bryan Lamkin, who has recently returned to Adobe, will assume responsibilities for cross company research and technology initiatives as well as Corporate Development. We wish Kevin well in this new chapter of his career.”
Disconnect: why Andy Rubin and Android called it quits [THE VERGE]
Google is keeping mum about Rubin’s next move, but it’s been speculated that he will join the company’s edgy R&D lab Google X. Rubin is an inventor; he is credited on more than 11 patents and a slew of patent applications. He’s also obsessed with hardware, especially the kind that moves or takes pictures. While at Microsoft, he’d slip away from the corporate drudgery to tinker in his Los Altos lab under the neon glow from a sign in the window: “Robots that kill.”
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