Amazon unveils Kindle Fire tablet

Added by on September 28, 2011

Amazon's Kindle Fire, an eagerly awaited tablet device

Amazon Inc revealed the eagerly awaited Kindle Fire, its newest tablet device on Wednesday.

The new Kindle Fire, priced at US$199, may impact sales of other tablet devices, like Apple’s iPad, and e-readers like Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-reader.

Analysts say that the Kindle Fire’s price and features could make it attractive to buyers that don’t already have a tablet device. Analysts are reported to expect Amazon to sell about 3m Kindle Fire devices during the 2011 holiday season, potentially making it the second-most popular tablet on the market, behind Apple’s iPad.

The Kindle Fire features a 7 inch Vibrant Color IPS screen, 8Gb of memory (enough to store 6,000 books and 80 apps), multi-touch interface, Wi-Fi connectivity, and an eight hour battery life when used for continuos reading.

The Kindle Fire also features a new browser called Amazon Silk that’s coupled with Amazon’s EC2 compute service to provide a faster and more consistent browsing experience for its users.

The Kindle Fire is the fifth device in the under Amazon’s Kindle brand. Amazon announced a price drop for it’s Kindle to US$79 and announced two touch Kindles: the Kindle Touch (US$99) and Kindle Touch 3G (US$199).

The Kindle Fire is expected to start shipping November 15.