Amazon showed off its new tablet at a media event in New York this morning. The new tablet dubbed the Kindle Fire will feature a LCD-backlit touchscreen and will allow users to not only read books like a normal kindle but also stream movies and TV shows. Users can also surf the web and play games from the Amazon app store.
The Kindle Fire will run on an Android mobile operating system built by Google. The Kindle Fire will start shipping on November 15. The big news though was the price point. The Kindle Fire will retail at $199, well below the $300 most analysts expected. This price point will definitely allow Amazon to directly compete with Apple’s iPad.
Amazon also unveiled the Kindle Touch, an updated version of their base Kindle that does away with the keypad in favor of touchscreen navigation. The Kindle Touch will start out at $99 and a 3G version at $149.
Finally, Amazon announced a redesigned version of their original Kindle. This redesigned version will have no touchscreen but retails at $79.
Shares of Amazon jumped over 4% after these announcements and many analysts believe that Amazon is in a good spot to compete with Apple.
Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps had this to say about the Amazon’s announcemnet, “Amazon’s willingness to sell hardware at a loss, combined with the strength of its brand, content, cloud infrastructure, and commerce assets, makes it the only credible iPad competitor in the market.” Most analysts expect Amazon to sell anywhere between 2 and 5 million tablets in the fourth quarter.
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