Nothing much new here, but The Guardian reports: Amazon is expected to release a tablet computer before Christmas which analysts forecast will finally provide serious competition for Apple'siPad, which has had the overwhelming share of the tablet market since its launch in April 2010.
Though the company declined to comment on Tuesday, a growing number of analysts and industry watchers said Amazon, best known for its online shopping site, is preparing to push into the highly competitive tablet market to add to its dominance of the handheld ereader market through its Kindle device.
Meanwhile US testers of Apple's new iCloud service say it will allow users both to download and to stream music wirelessly to iPhones and iPads, after using early versions of the "iTunes Match" service – which will put Apple into even closer rivalry with Amazon's own "music locker" service launched in the US earlier this year.
Sarah Rotman at Forrester, speaking about the expected tablet from Amazon, said that if Jeff Bezos's company manages to set the price below $300 (£185) and launch it by October, "we see Amazon selling 3m to 5m tablets" by the end of the year and that it will "completely disrupt the status quo". However she sees Apple continuing to dominate the sector, where it has roughly three-quarters of the market. In the Christmas quarter of 2010, Apple sold 7.3m iPads.
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