Amazon.com’s first foray into the tablet wars — the Amazon Kindle Fire, launched a day earlier than scheduled on Monday, Nov 14, 2011. It is the most anticipated tablet release since the iPad and is already the best-selling item on Amazon.com. More than likely, the 7 inch tablet will be the best-selling item of the entire holiday season and beyond.
What makes the Kindle Fire so special? After all, it is not the most sophisticated device relative to other iPad competitors. The answer lies with the Amazon ecosystem, a platform which gives you access to the following to start off with:
- Over 100,000 movies and TV shows from Amazon Instant Video
- Over 17,000,000 songs from Amazon MP3
- Millions of books
- Over 400 full-color magazines and newspapers
- 100 exclusive graphic novels from DC Comics, including Watchmen, the bestselling graphic novel of all time
- Several thousand apps and games, including Netflix, Pandora, Hulu Plus, Rhapsody, and games from Electronic Arts, Zynga and Rovio
- A free month of Amazon Prime, which offers two-day shipping and access to nearly 13,000 movies and TV shows available to stream at no additional cost and exclusive access to over 5,000 popular books from the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library to read on any Kindle device at no additional cost and with no due dates
The Kindle Fire is an Android 2.3 device, albeit with an Amazon interface. There is keen interest from developers to design for the Kindle and the app store will only grow with time. Arguably the main attraction lies with the fact that you are getting all this for only $199 compared to the $249 Nook and the cheapest iPad2 still costing $499.
We are finally about to see a true iPad competitor. The tablet wars are coming and it will only benefit the consumers even more.
