Amazon Introduces Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, unveiled two cool new products and lowered the price of their flagship Kindle to $79 (damn, I bought mine at the beginning of June for $139).

Amazon also unveiled the Kindle Touch (both in 3G and WiFi-only) and the Kindle Fire, the long awaited Amazon tablet. I’m guessing they are changing the eReader and tablet game, not in terms of technology, but price.

Here’s a rundown of the two new Kindle’s:

Kindle Fire

According to Amazon’s website, the Fire features:

• 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
• Amazon Appstore – thousands of popular apps and games
• Ultra-fast web browsing – Amazon Silk
• Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
• Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
• Fast, powerful dual-core processor
• Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

The Kindle Fire is priced at $199. Compare that to the iPad 2, which starts at $499. It will be interesting to see how the Fire stacks up to the iPad in terms of performance once customers start receiving their orders.

Kindle Touch

I’m surprised it took Amazon this long to come out with a Touch-version of their Kindle. Anyway, the Kindle Touch isn’t all that different from their standard Kindle. But here are the basics:

• Most-advanced E Ink display, now with multi-touch
• New sleek design – 8% lighter, 11% smaller, holds 3,000 books
• Text-to-speech, plus audio books and mp3s
• Built in Wi-Fi – Get books in 60 seconds
• Massive book selection, over 800,000 titles are $9.99 or less
• New – Borrow Kindle books from your public library

The WiFi-only unit is a cool $99 and the WiFi + 3G will set you back $149. By comparison, the Barnes & Noble Nook Touch is $139.

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, I’m trying to guess how they will react to Amazon’s new devices and lower prices. If they don’t have another eReader in the works now, then it’ll be too late to push something out for Christmas. At the very least, I’m expecting a price cut in the Nook family of eReaders.

It’s going to be pretty hard for people in the market for an eReader to pass up a $79 price point. I bought mine at $139 and I’m kicking myself for not waiting. Oh well, that’s the nature of the digital beast.

Related Posts

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• Ereader Price Wars Continue: Amazon releases $139 Kindle Wi-Fi
• Amazon, AT&T Debut Kindle 3G At $139
• Barnes & Noble Debuts The Nook Simple Touch Reader
• Review: Amazon’s Kindle app for iPhone/iPod Touch

Read More: Amazon Kindle, eBooks, eReaders, Tablet Computers, Technology