Kindle HD takes on the iPad

Amazon's Kindle Fire HD goes head-to-head with the iPad The Fire wins on price, coming in $200 less than Apple's cheapest tablet But there are 225,000 apps designed for the iPad, a dominating number Both tablets offer high-definition displays.

 Having established itself as Apple's top tablet competitor by going smaller and cheaper, Amazon will now go head to head with the category-defining iPad on its own turf.

Even as Google's new Nexus 7 challenges the Kindle Fire for dominance in the small-tablet category, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Thursday introduced a new,8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD.

 

That pits the new device, which will ship in late November, against a device with which Apple has, thus far, squashed all direct competition. No tablet that has tried to match the iPad feature-for-feature has gained more than a token foothold in the market.