The tablets come with a front-facing HD camera, while the 8.9 model comes with an 8megapixel rear-facing camera and LED flash. Design-wise, Amazon has introduced a more angular rear casing where the power and volume buttons can also now be found. The new Kindles are upgraded in several ways, Amazon also cut the piece on what will be its entry-level 7-inch tablet, the Kindle Fire HD with 8 gigabytes of memory, to $139 from a $199 version that had 16 GB of memory. That makes the tablet just $20 more than Amazon's latest dedicated e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite.
The Kindle Fire HD is sheathed in a new magnesium alloy body like the HDX models, but has the same screen resolution and processing power of the older model. Stephen Baker, a consumer technology analyst with research firm NPD Group, said the price cut to the Kindle Fire HD will do more to help Amazon compete in the tablet market than the added features on the newer models.
Globally, amazon's shipments in the April-June quarter were down 59 percent from a year earlier at 470,000, NPD said. That compared to 14.6 million for Apple's iPad, down 17 percent from a year ago, and 10.8 million for Samsung's Galaxy line, up 539 percent. Amazon sells most of its Kindles around the Christmas holidays, Baker told. Amazon also unveiled more features that incorporate data from its iMDb movie database subsidiary. The newer tablets, users who turn on the "X-ray" feature can see a small window that lists the name of a song that is playing in some TV shows and movies.
One tap brings up the option to buy the song. Users can also look for all music in a show and zip to the exact spot where a particular song is playing. The 7 inch Kindle Fire HDX costs $229 and will begin shipping on 18 October in the United States. The 4G version is $329 and will begin shipping on 14 November. The 8.9 inch Kindle Fire HDX is $379 and it will begin shipping in the US on November 7. The 4G version is $479 and it will begin shipping December 10.