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The Seattle-based Web retailer said the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD with 4G wireless capability will start at $399, down from $499. Amazon reduced the price of the Wi-Fi only version by $30 to $269.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is phasing out the sale of Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablet and Kindle e-readers, the second major retailer to stop offering the items in six months... Retailers are trying to fight a growing practice called "showrooming." That's when shoppers, armed with smartphones, browse products in physical stores and then shop online for a better price.

Amazon says buyers of its new Kindle Fire HD tablet will get the option to turn off the advertisements that appear on its standby screen for $15. The online retailer showed off the tablet last week, and said there would be no option to turn off the ads. That was a departure from Amazon's previous policies. It has shipped Kindle e-readers with "Special Offers" ads on the standby screen, but users could pay to have them turned off.

Amazon's new Kindle Fire HD boasts a much more vibrant screen than the original tablet that came out about a year ago. That makes buying movies and TV shows to watch on the device a lot more appealing....

Amazon.com Inc. is expected to unveil a new Kindle Fire on Thursday as it seeks to take a bigger bite of the tablet computer market and boost sales of digital goods like e-books and movies.

Amazon.com quenched the Kindle Fire on Thursday, saying its first tablet computer is now "sold out." The Internet retailer has a major press conference scheduled for next Thursday in Santa Monica, California. It's widely expected to reveal a new model of the Fire there, so the announcement that the first model is "sold out" suggests that Amazon halted production a while ago to retool for a new model.

With the rumblings from Amazon about the early success of its new Kindle Fire over the holiday season, the company’s disappointing fourth quarter results came as a surprise. More surprising was Amazon’s silence regarding total Kindle Fire sales for the quarter. During the earnings call, Amazon’s executive team deferred questions about the device to the press release, which simply regurgitated sales data from December.

The Kindle Fire is…on fire. Despite some mixed reviews from the pundit class, consumers have flocked to Amazon‘s first entry into the tablet market. Stifel Nicolas analyst Jordan Rohan in a new research lifted his estimate for the company fourth quarter Fire sales to 6 million units from 5 million. He also raised his financial estimates for the company, asserting that the Kindle and the Kindle Fire have effectively become the third major mobile ecosystem after Apple iOS and Google Android.

Could the next big move from Amazon.com be a smartphone? analyst Mark Mahaney asserted in a research note this morning that the company could follow up its recent launch of the Kindle Fire tablet with a smartphone that would launch in time for the 2012 holiday season.

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.