Rumors began to circulate in September 2010 that Amazon intended to release their very own tablet device.

According to M G Siegler, from Tech Crunch. Amazon has now prodiced such a tablet and will release the 7 inch version this coming November, at a price of $250, with a further release of the more expensive 10 inch tablet during the first quarter of 2012.

Siegler describes the Design Verification Testing unit he saw as a full color display touch screen running on Android, looking a bit like a BlackBerry PlayBook but with a slew of different functions.

Amazon is flying solo on this, which means that Google is conspicuously absent from the device. According to Siegler, “… the key for Amazon is just how deeply integrated all of their services are. Amazon’s content store is always just one click away. The book reader is a Kindle app … the music player is Amazon’s Cloud Player. The movie player is Amazon’s Instant Video player. The app store is Amazon’s Android Appstore.

Google’s Android Market is nowhere to be found. In fact, no Google app is anywhere to be found. This is Android fully forked. My understanding is that the Kindle OS was built on top of some version of Android prior to 2.2. And Amazon will keep building on top of that of that over time. In other words, this won’t be getting “Honeycomb” or “Ice Cream Sandwich” — or if it does, users will never know it because that will only be the underpinnings of the OS. Any visual changes will be all Amazon.

Google’s Android Market is nowhere to be found. In fact, no Google app is anywhere to be found. This is Android fully forked. My understanding is that the Kindle OS was built on top of some version of Android prior to 2.2. And Amazon will keep building on top of that of that over time. ”

Amazon will be pricing its new tablet like Barnes & Nobles Nook Color. The incentive to choose Amazon device rather than the Nook might come in the form of a free subscription to Amazon Prime, currently selling for $79 a year and giving users access to perks like free unlimited two-day shipping, no minimum purchases for free shipping or access to Amazon’s Instant Video service.

This info comes from M.G. Siegler’s post on Tech Crunch.