Video: Amazon Kindle Fire

We hear a lot about "iPad killers".. but at the last glance, the iPad was still going strong. The Amazon Kindle Fire isn't an iPad killer either, but it could be the first serious competition that Apple have.

The hardware isn't very exciting - it's some sort of 7" Android tablet, the software is more interesting with a custom front end and a new browser called Amazon Silk that works together with Amazon's cloud service to make browsing much quicker. The key thing is that you can download content directly from the Kindle store with the minimum of fuss, much in the same say that iTunes works on the iPad.

It's a lot, lot cheaper than the iPad or indeed any other big name tablet. Amazon are probably taking a loss on each unit in order to get customers hooked into the Kindle store. No doubt modders will be looking at a way of unshackling it.

The Kindle Fire will be out before thanksgiving in the US, sometime next year for the rest of Europe. At those prices it looks like a steal.