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ONLINE RETAILER Clove has taken the Asus Transformer Prime hybrid tablet off sale after discovering problems with its stock.

The smartphone and tablet retailer has found reliability problems with the Android 4.0 tablet’s WiFi and GPS connectivity. The firm said it has pulled the device from its web site until further notice.

Clove has had some supply chain issues but said, “However we have been able to obtain some stock sooner than expected; but because of complaints of faults with the model we took the decision to thoroughly test stock before fulfilling any orders.”

“We are at this time not satisfied that all units we could provide you with are working correctly, and performing to the standard we expect of the unit. We have therefore taken the decision until further notice stop selling the Asus Transformer Prime.”

Chris Ward, digital media coordinator at Clove told The INQUIRER that it received a “reasonable stock allocation” but not enough to fill its orders. “We did some random testing on the stock and yes the main factors taken into consideration were WiFi and GPS,” he added.

Asus had said it wasn’t aware of any WiFi issues and removed the GPS from the Transform Prime’s specifications sheet. It has declined to comment on the situation.

It released a firmware update last month, but that was for a graphics bug.

Ward told The INQUIRER, “We will monitor the situation and may make it available again in the future, depending on availability and the resolution of the technical issues discussed so far.” µ

THE COST OF MAKING Amazon’s Kindle Fire is less than analysts IHS Isuppli had previously thought.

IHS Isuppli had estimated that Amazon will be making a loss on each Kindle Fire, however it has revised that to the slightly more sensible loss of just under .

A loss is a loss, but this is one that Amazon will pull back in on ebook sales, which it has already said are higher than its paperback sales.

According to Isuppli’s earlier estimates the bill of materials cost for the Kindle Fire was just over 9 thanks to components like a touchscreen. Other costs include the memory chips, , the battery, .25 and the processor, .00. Now the firm says that the Fire costs 1.70.

“The Kindle Fire, at a retail price point of 9, is sold at a loss by Amazon, just as the basic Kindle is also sold at a loss at the current retail price point,” said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director, teardown services for IHS.

“Amazon makes its money not on Kindle hardware, but on the paid content and other products it plans to sell the consumer through the Kindle.”

The touchscreen remains the most expensive part of the bill of materials but it seems that Amazon has managed to shave off a dollar here and there by choosing some unexpected providers. The use of a Jorjin WLAN module instead of a Broadcom or Texas Instruments equivalent, for example, has lead to a saving.

Texas Instruments is doing okay out of the hardware however, and takes just under 13 per cent of the Kindle Fire costs, or around . Amazon sources its touchscreen display from two companies, LG Display and E Ink.

One obvious saving comes from the amount of DDR2 DRAM, as Isuppli had previously estimated that the Kindle Fire would ship with 8GB. In fact it ships with only four. Elpida supplied the DRAM in the Kindle Fire torn down by IHS Isuppli, and combined with NAND from Samsung, memory costs .10 per device, while previously the firm had put a price tag on the memory therein.

Battery and processor costs have not gone down, and in both cases Isuppli has assumed that the Kindle mimics the Blackberry Playbook. This would give it a Texas Instruments OMAP 4 dual-core processor. µ

ELECTRONICS MAKER Kogan has announced hardware upgrades to its Agora tablet at no extra charge.

Kogan has admitted that it advertised an incorrect specification list at first, which it has now corrected, and it announced a number of hardware changes – all improvements – that will appear on the tablet at no extra cost.

The tablet still has a 1GHz processor, as we mentioned earlier, but now it has an additional dedicated 200MHz graphics processor. The front facing camera is now a 2MP device, which we had formerly told you would be only 1.3MP.

There are further changes with the USB interface, which Kogan has said will be compatible with 3G dongles and external storage devices with sizes up to 1TB.

Although Kogan made no mention of it, we’ve spotted that the tablet’s product page now claims the tablet will come with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, not Android 2.2 Froyo as we reported previously. The other specifications seem to be all in order with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage and HDMI output.

We wrote about the Agora tablet back in April and its low price of £89 grabbed some attention, with one reader commenting, “What the heck? At that price there is no room for complaints.”

That £89 “live price” – a constantly changing pre order price – is, a month later, still just the respectably reasonable sum of £99.

The Agora is in direct competition with tablets like the Archos 70, which also has a 7in screen, the same 1GHz processor and similar connectivity such as a full size USB port. However, the Archos 70 is double the price of the Kogan Agora at around £200. µ