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[Lemur]

Amazon unveiled their new tablet/e-reader offerings this morning, a B&W e-reader, a touchscreen variant, and a big colorful tablet, priced around $80, $100–$150 and $200, respectively.

Here's an initial analysis:

Amazon can hit Apple low with the $79 Kindle. Because so many gadgets are sold to price-insensitive early adopters, we all tend to underestimate the effect that a sub-$100 price has. The lower the price, the bigger the market. For tablet owners like myself, the new Kindle could be that cheaper device we carry on the subway or to the gym. For people who don't own an e-reading device, a device that is substantially below the $100 barrier may be just the move they need to make the switch to digital reading. HP couldn't move many Touchpads at $400, but at $99 they sold out so quickly that online retailers had to refund people's money because sales outstripped supply. For the mass-market, a double-digit purchase feels more accessible.

Amazon can also hit Apple on the weight of the iPad 2. The iPad weighs 21.6 ounces. The Kindle fire weighs 14.6 ounces. It doesn't seem like a lot, but when you're reading with one hand. those 7 ounces are big. Put it this way: the iPad is the weight of a sizeable hardcover book while the Kindle Fire is the weight of a paperback. Which do you like to carry around more?

Unlike other companies who are trying to knock off the iPad, Amazon seems to have a strategy here that plays to its strengths: readers, cloud computing, e-retailing, end-to-end media services. If nothing else, that should make Amazon a real competitor. You get the sense from the company that they are trying to do something rather than copycatting something that's worked.

So ... the beginning of some real competition for the iPad? Thoughts?

-edit-

Full specs of the Kindle Fire, which is the most intriguing of the lot.