Amazon, Tablet Computer | featured news

When Kindle Fire customers across the country open their boxes next week, they will be able to choose from several thousand of the most popular Android apps and games, including Netflix, Rhapsody, Pandora, Twitter, Comics by comiXology, Facebook, The Weather Channel and popular games from Zynga, EA, Gameloft, PopCap and Rovio. Kindle Fire customers will be able to download these apps and games without having to register multiple times and using Amazon’s simple and secure 1-Click payment technology. Plus, all apps are Amazon-tested on Kindle Fire for the best experience possible, customers can get a great “paid” app for free every day, and once you’ve downloaded an app from the Amazon Appstore, it’s available on Kindle Fire as well as your other Android-based devices.

Ever since Amazon unveiled its 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet in September, a lingering phrase has been attached to the low-cost, high-profile device: "the iPad's first true Android competitor."

The Kindle Fire tablet may be the hottest selling gadget this holiday, pressuring Amazon.com Inc's profit margins but giving the world's largest Internet retailer potentially millions of new high-spending customers.

Apple could scarcely be more dominant in the nascent tablet computing market, but Amazon could change that in a hurry, a new study suggests.

"Leaked" screen shots, allegedly from Amazon's internal stock monitoring system, suggest the new Kindle Fire tablet is already a hot item, racking up 250,000 reservations in five days.

Amazon's Kindle Fire is a Catch-22 for retailers: The $199 tablet computer could both help Christmas traffic and hurt future sales.

After months of speculation, it's here: Amazon's tablet, the $199 Kindle Fire, was unveiled Wednesday. Smaller and cheaper than Apple's dominant iPad, the Kindle Fire has a 7-inch display and runs on a heavily customized version of Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android operating system. The tablet offers Wi-Fi connectivity, but no 3G or other cellular connection. It also lacks a camera and microphone, two features found in most rival tablets.

Amazon’s souped-up color version of its Kindle e-reader hopes to undercut the iPad in price and steal away a couple of million in unit sales by Christmas.

Amazon.com said it will allow readers to borrow Kindle books free at more than 11,000 U.S. libraries, a new twist in the growing battle for market share among electronic tablet makers.

Amazon.com Inc said sales of its Kindle e-reader were strong over the holiday season amid competition from devices such as Apple Inc's iPad, a computer tablet that also has e-reader capabilities.