If Amazon enters the tablet market, it would join a crowded field led by the . The DigiTimes report said Apple will take delivery of 14 million to 15 million iPads from Foxconn Electronics in the third quarter, up from 10.5 million to 11 million in the second quarter.

All the remaining tablets, mostly running the Android mobile operating system, would account for 6 million to 7 million tablets in the third quarter, according to DigiTimes. The website didn't calculate how many Samsung Galaxy Tabs would be shipping in the third quarter, but said the Acer Iconia Tab A500 would be behind Amazon's, at up to 900,000 units shipped.

Meanwhile, DigiTimes said Motorola Xoom shipments would be 400,000 for the quarter; the Streak would be up to 250,000 and the HTC Flyer would be up to 450,000. The report didn't calculate shipments for the TouchPad, which runs WebOS.

One analyst, Bob O'Donnell at IDC, said Amazon "has something in the works, but the question is whether it will be a true tablet or something that competes with the color Barnes & Noble Nook."

The Nook is classified as an e-reader but it has a , runs Android and has other attributes that bring it closer to a tablet. It has a pricetag of $249, which is half the cost of most tablets, O'Donnell noted. Nook's lower price helped it in the e-reader market for the first time over the Kindle and others in the first quarter, IDC reported Friday. O'Donnell said the Nook accounted for about one-third of the 3.3 million e-readers shipped in the first quarter, but he wouldn't share specific numbers.