With Kindle Fire HD, Amazon Challenges Apple On Its Own Turf

Apple, at last, has a bona fide contestant in the inscription space now. And it certain isn't Samsung. Amazon's contingent of Kindle Fire HD tablets are nothing reduction than a admission of fight against Apple and the iPad.

"The Amazon Kindle Fire HD, in the partial term, eliminates all contest outward of Apple," Bovitz investigate executive Randy Hellman told Wired around email. "Amazon is perplexing to location it as an iPad homogeneous for a improved value."

Amazon's initial Kindle Fire , that debuted final November, was think by many to be an "iPad killer" previous to and on its release, but it never really, well, held fire. Not that it was a failure, either. Although Amazon isn't releasing sales numbers, it says the Kindle Fire creates up 22 percent of U.S. inscription sales.

This time around, Amazon evidently schooled lessons and done a few great changes to its first-generation inscription to broach the 7- and 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD. Unlike the initial budget-friendly Kindle Fire, the Fire HD's specs are on standard with today's top-tier tablets - even at the $200 and $300 cost points.

"This year, you wish to have the most appropriate inscription at any price," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos mentioned at the company's media eventuality Thursday morning.

Specs aside, however, a positive, seamless user experience is what unequivocally creates or breaks a inscription - that is because so many other Android slates have flopped. To that end, Amazon didn't only ascent on the hardware front: The Kindle Fire HD moreover sports a washing list of integrated program features that rival, or even beat, the ease of use of Apple's firmly finished iOS ecosystem. According to an Aug consult by Forrester , 31 percent of consumers already have their credit card on record with Amazon, compared with only 18 percent with Apple. That means that for many, easing in to the content-rich Amazon ecosystem could be an popular and well-spoken transition.

With both the entry-level iPad and the Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE labelled at $500, consumers have a coherent choice: hardware contra content. "Amazon's new Kindle HD is all about calm and access to reward services. The hardware is only an all-access pass to fun," Hellman said. "With Apple's iPad, the deftly designed, well-engineered hardware is a ample incomparable square of the product's story, with a churned bag of calm offerings."

Amazon's unique information outline is the other hired gun underline is to Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE. It worked with ATT to emanate the plan, a very affordable $50 a year for 250MB of information per month and 20GB of clouded cover storage. Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps wrote that it's "a very disruptive pierce that puts pressure on carriers to offer their own lower-price plans." Apple, for now, is still reliant on high-priced conduit information skeleton for its 4G inscription .

Although Amazon is personification in Apple's sandbox right away (with its own hostile set of toys, you might add), Apple, for now, still has the top hand.

"Given Apple's iOS app preference and considerable ecosystem of its own," Gartner researcher Michael Gartenberg tweeted , "I do not think iPad is beneath leading threat. But Apple should not be complacent."

It should be very engaging to see how Apple, who Hellman says is often "one step forward of the game," handles the idea of not being complacent.