Amazon has unveiled the Kindle Fire tablet, which at less than half the price, could be the biggest challenger to Apple’s dominant iPad yet.
The Kindle Fire will have a 7-inch display and sell for $199 (£130), compared with $499 for Apple’s cheapest iPad.
The device, will expand the Kindle’s functions from a traditional e-book reader to a multifunctional digital media tool, will run on Google ’s Android software.
Until now, the company has limited itself to making black and white e-readers, designed for consuming books and magazines.
As well as targeting Apple’s iPad, Amazon is likely to have its sights on rival bookseller US Barnes & Noble, which already has a colour tablet.
Amazon will be hoping to leverage both the strength of the Kindle brand, built up over three generations of its popular e-book reader, and its ability to serve up content such as music and video.
In recent years, the company has begun offering downloadable music for sale, and also has a streaming video-on-demand service in the US.
Those, combined with its mobile application store, give it a more sophisticated content “ecosystem” than most of its rivals.
The Kindle Fire’s $199 (£130) price tag undercuts the Nook Color by $50 (£30) and is significantly cheaper than more powerful tablets from Apple, Samsung, Motorola and others.
It is due to go on sale on 15 November in the US, although global release dates are currently unavailable.
The product is already listed on Amazon’s US retail site (available for US residents only):
