Tablet Computer, Amazon.com | featured news

The New York Times reported that Amazon will roll out a Kindle Fire update "in less than two weeks." The cause for the update? Fixes for problems that have concerned many early users.

Amazon’s ultra-cheap Kindle Fire has already shipped between 3 and 4 million units and combined with news of excellent Black Friday sales last week, the Fire may already be the number two tablet after the Apple iPad.

After more than a year of missteps by Apple's tablet rivals, at least one viable competitor, Amazon's Kindle Fire, appears to have surfaced for the popular iPad. Amazon.com Inc. on Monday trumpeted the success of its recently launched Kindle Fire tablet, part of a family of Kindle products that include low-priced e-readers. The company said it sold more than four times as many Kindle products on Black Friday last week as the same shopping day in 2010.

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.