Amazon, the largest online store in the world, plans to create a range of devices that will allow to consume various digital content that Amazon sells. While no exact plans are revealed, the range of devices may include personal digital media players as well as tablet PCs.

Lab126, Amazon's hardware development division, currently lists tens of positions that it would like to fill. According to a report from the New York Times, Amazon is indeed looking forward to develop consumer gadgets in addition to its popular Kindle electronic books reader. It is claimed that Amazon wants to manufacture more hardware products that would enable uncomplicated purchasing of Amazon content by consumers, including its electronic books, music and movie rentals and so on.

The same strategy is pursued by Apple, whose majority of gadgets are designed to work with its stores and enable simple purchase of what the company sells. In case Amazon mimics the strategy, then it is possible to expect music players, slates, phones, set-top-boxes and who-knows-what-else devices.

“Jeff Bezos’ original goal for the lab was to build a range of other devices. There was talk of music players and other electronics," an anonymous sources is reported to have said about the chief exec of Amazon.

Even though Amazon is the largest reseller of CDs, DVDs and BDs, other companies were quicker to launch their digital content deliver services, which naturally caused frustration among the company's executives. Additionally, there are more competitors coming to the market of electronic books, including Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google and others. Keeping that in mind, it is natural that Amazon has to develop more consumer electronics devices and the main question is what those devices will be.

Tags: Amazon, Kindle, Apple, Google, e-books