It's long been predicted that any real rival to the Apple iPad's dominance of the tablet market will come from Amazon.
But now the giant on-line retailer has revealed its Kindle Fire, should Apple be quaking in its (very expensive, handmade) shoes?
Let's get things straight, the Fire won't be a direct competitor to the iPad. It's smaller, much smaller, at 7" compared with the iPad's 9.7". But, of course, that makes it just about pocketable as opposed to bag-able.
The Fire doesn't do as much. There's no camera or microphone and no 3G connection. It's, at launch anyway, WiFi-only.
But its big plus is its - presumably heavily subsidised - price. It costs less than half the price of a basic WiFi-only iPad.
So will people buy it instead of the iPad?
Yes, of course they will. Believe it or not, there are many many people who can't afford an iPad. But they could afford a Fire.
While you can't take photos on the Fire, you can use it for emails, web browsing, book reading, magazine and newspaper subscribing, app downloading from the huge Android app store, play Angry Birds....and it's much much cheaper than the iPad...about £150 compared with £399.
Amazon Kindles have managed to keep Apple from complete dominance of the eBook market and it seems likely it will manage to grab a significant part of what would otherwise be the potential iPad market.
Price is all important and as long as Amazon keeps the Fire price down, it will get customers who otherwise would have saved longer - or gone into debt - to get an Apple device.
That is unless Apple lowers the price of the iPad allowing its hardware to be subsidised by sales from its App Store.
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