Amazon just NUKED the tablet market with FIRE ( love the title in the article) 

Game changer this is.

Amazon’s not-so-secret project is finally unveiled and is the company’s first real tablet contender. The Kindle Fire is Amazon’s prize fighter in the battle for tablet dominance. But the new LCD-equipped Kindle isn’t in the corner alone. Amazon also took the wraps off of two new, more-traditional Kindles, including a $99 touchscreen model and a stripped-down $79 option.

The Fire itself is rather characterless and dull. It looks a lot like the 7-inch BlackBerry PlayBook (probably for good reason) and features just enough tech to pass as acceptable. There’s a two-point multitouch screen (the iPad has a 10-point screen), and an unspecified CPU although reports place a TI OMAP CPU at the core. There are no physical buttons on the black slate, along with little Amazon branding. The Fire doesn’t have a camera, microphone or 3G connectivity although it does pack WiFi. It’s all about the experience here.

The Kindle Fire marks a significant departure from Amazon’s norm. The most notable change is obviously the multitouch 7-inch LCD rather than an e-ink display, but moreover, the Kindle Fire is a complete storefront for the retailer rather than just an ereader. The tablet features apps for Amazon’s Android Appstore, Kindle store, Amazon MP3, and Prime Instant Video. Nearly all of Amazon’s recent news, Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon Cloud Drive, Kindle Cloud Reader, the streaming deals with Fox and NBCUniversal, were in preparation for the Fire. With these cloud services in place, the Kindle Fire is a legitimate iPad competitor.



Read more here:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/.....indle-fir/

This'll be interesting. I have an iPad, and I love it, but that massive price difference, and the increasing importance of cloud based storage, and possibly even computing, could make a lower cost and less powerful tablet really attractive.