Amazon releases new Kindle Fire tablets at an event in Santa Monica

The moment finally arrived. Amazon took the wraps off its flagship tablet Kindle Fire but this time there is not one Fire that will rekindle the desire for a smaller tablet but there are three versions. The company announced the devices at an event on Thursday held at an old hanger near the municipal airport in Santa Monica, California.

Last year’s Kindle Fire was also mentioned in the presentation; the company has further lowered its price from $199 to $159, and it comes in the same 8 GB capacity. The $199 price tag has been pried off the original Fire and now has been slapped on the new 7-inch Kindle Fire HD. There are two more version of the Fire HD that sport 8.9-inch screens.

The 7-inch Fire has received a number of upgrades from pixel density to processor speeds and software extras. However, the more prominent of them all is the new shape. The new Kindles are now slimmer and lighter, with a bevelled back, like the iPads from Apple.

With the new iterations in the Kindle series, especially with the 8.9-inch versions, the largest e-retailer in the world has taken a stab at the iPad market. They now boast a near-to-9.6-inch displays, faster processors and more efficient WiFi connectivity. The high-end 4G LTE version will certainly prove a direct competitor of the new iPad 4G LTE, with a small compromise on the screen size.

“This new offering better competes against Apple,” said S&P Capital IQ equity analyst Michael Souers. “One earlier criticism of Kindle Fire is that its screen was too small vs. the iPad.”

The Kindle tablets were seen largely threatened by the recent release of Nexus 7 from Google however, now the media is of another opinion.

“I think the tablet market is a two-horse race” between Amazon and Apple, said Tim Bajarin, president of research firm Creative Strategies, who attended the event. “What Amazon announced today is so much better than the Google Nexus tablet.”

The 7-inch Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD will start shipping on September 14 while, the 8.9-inch models will hit the market on November 20.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Sep 7 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.