Online book and electronics retailer Amazon.com’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) new tablet set the world on fire Wednesday at a New York press event as it may be the strongest rival to Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad.
The new tablet will feature an LCD-backlit touchscreen enabling users to read e-books, watch movies as well as TV shows, surf the web and play games that can be downloaded from the company’s app store.
The Kindle Fire utilizes the Android operating system, has 8 gigabytes of internal storage, which translates to 80 apps, 10 movies or 800 songs or about 6,000 books as the content can be stored on Amazon’s cloud storage service.
It will use a new technology developed by Amazon called “Silk”, which will speed-up the Web browser’s performance and shorten page downloading time. It will be available to purchase on November 15, but can also be pre-ordered now.
"Kindle Fire brings together all of the things we’ve been working on at Amazon for over 15 years into a single, fully-integrated service for customers," Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said.
The $199 price tag is about 60% cheaper than Apple’s iPad, which has thus far dominated the tablet market, despite attempts by companies like Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI), Research in Motion (TSE:RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM), Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ) and Samsung to squeeze in the lucrative market.
"Amazon has an advantage that other tablet manufacturers don't in that millions of people already visit its site on a regular basis," analyst Ken Sena of Evercore Partners told The Wall Street Journal.
Tablet sales have climbed more than 300% in the second-quarter of the year, according to research by International Data Corp., which expects more than 60 million devices to be shipped this year. Notably, almost seven of every 10 tablet computers sold are iPads.
Amazon also unveiled its new e-reader, which is 30% lighter and also 18% smaller, while it retains the same 6-inch e-ink display found in previous models.
For the first time, Kindle is available in seven languages – American or British English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. It is available for purchase now.
The latest-generation Kindle e-reader has built-in Wi-Fi, and boasts a powerful processor that speeds up page turns and is capable of holding up to 1,400 books.
The Seattle-based company’s stock shot up $6.80, or 3.03%, to $231.01 Wednesday afternoon on the Nasdaq market.