Rewind to June 2011, and you’ll find my lengthy speculation on how an Amazon-based tablet could be the one true contender to the iPad. Now, with the leaves turning brown, Amazon has officially sent out invitations marking Sept. 28, 2011, as a special media occasion. Will the Kindle tablet be there? Here’s the scoop …

Unlike Apple, Amazon has not teased what the event is with any sort of cute graphics or puns. The invitation simply asks the guest to join Amazon for a press conference. So why the strong gut feeling that this is the Kindle tablet event? Mainly because TechCrunch blogger MG Siegler allegedly was given access to the device to play with, which he was allowed to write about and describe in vivid detail but now allowed to take any pictures of. Unless TechCrunch is trolling the entire Internet, there’s no big reason to doubt the validity of the article.

The Kindle device, according to Siegler, is similar in shape and feel to the BlackBerry PlayBook, and runs Android — but a super-customized version of Android that Google had absolutely nothing to do with. Amazon has gone out of its way to build the OS to integrate with all of Amazon’s services natively. If true, it’s clear my initial speculation that Amazon would leverage its immense wealth of multimedia (and own Android app store) has come to pass. The price tag of the device is set to be around $250, which, for an alleged 7-inch device, is the perfect sweet spot and quite a serious contender as an iPad killer.

More importantly, Amazon’s event is slated to be held right before Apple’s fall event, unofficially confirmed for Oct. 4. If Amazon makes this device available for the holiday season, it could be the first real challenger Apple will face in the tablet space. It also will mean other Android tablet developers will be scrambling to deliver something that competes against Apple and Amazon. Why? Because a regular vanilla Android tablet isn’t linked in with any unified ecosystem of content. Apple has the App Store, iBookstore and the iTunes store all natively built into the device. Amazon has its own Android application store, plus its own movie, music and Kindle stores. Android has bits and pieces of all these, but none are truly built into the experience of the device despite Google’s best efforts.

Like I said in June, Amazon’s Kindle tablet will be the first cohesive content delivery tablet since the iPad, and if it catches on, it will significantly change the shape of the tablet computing landscape and cloud computing. Amazon has had a lot of time to sit back, examine the computing landscape and build its services, so I have no doubt the Kindle tablet will cause a huge splash in the world of consumer electronics, and perhaps even reshape how cloud computing is seen across the entire IT industry.

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