Amazon's Kindle may take on Apple iPad - Hindustan Times

One after another, technology firms have been seduced into entering the market for tablets. Apple made it look so irresistible, with 29 million consumers snapping up an iPad in the device's first 15 months.

But neither Samsung nor Motorola nor Acer could beg or borrow any of Apple's magic. Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, said it shipped only 200,000 of its PlayBooks in three months - about what Apple sells in three days. Hewlett-Packard, which flopped this summer with the TouchPad, was the latest to get burned.

Now comes a final competitor, the best-placed challenger of all: Amazon.com. The retailer is on the verge of introducing its own tablet, analysts predict, a souped-up color version of its Kindle e-reader that will undercut the iPad in price and aim to steal away a couple of million in unit sales by Christmas.

A competition between Amazon and Apple tablets will be a battle that pits the company that created the first popular e-reader against the company that created the first popular tablet.

Whichever company triumphs, said Barclays analyst Anthony DiClemente, "the consumer is going to be the winner."

The Amazon tablet, analysts believe, will most likely sell for about $250, half the price of the basic iPad. Its screen will be seven inches as opposed to the iPad's 10 inches.