Instant access to lots of media features, from magazines to TV shows

Nov 14, 2011 15:53 GMT  ·  By

Amazon's Kindle Fire Tablet may have come under fire, pun or no, even before it got released, but that didn't stop Amazon from launching it, the slate having actually made its debut earlier than initially thought.

The company just issued the official press release, making the announcement early (tomorrow is when things were supposed to kick off).

At the price of $199 (145.69 Euro), it already attracted attention, mostly beneficial but also not quite so.

“We’re thrilled to be able to ship Kindle Fire to our customers earlier than we expected. Kindle Fire quickly became the bestselling item across all of Amazon.com, and based on customer response we’re building millions more than we’d planned,” said Dave Limp, vice president, Amazon Kindle.

“Customers are excited about Kindle Fire because it is a premium product at the non-premium price of only $199.”

We aren't going to list all the hardware details, since people are much better off dropping by the official product page here.

What we will say is that the 7-inch device has access to over 100,000 movies and TV shows, at least 17,000,000 songs, millions of books, full-color magazines and newspapers, thousands of apps and 100 exclusive graphics novels from DC comics (even Watchmen, all-time bestseller).

Put together, that is more than 18 million different materials, which is no small feat, especially with a free month of Amazon Prime (free access and shipping to movies, TV series and books).

All things considered, the tablet could very well be the most disruptive of its kind ever made, likely to prompt other companies to drop their price, especially after the Fire was found to be more popular than the Apple iPad.

Amazon also got so many pre-orders that it said, some time ago, how it was going to make millions more in order to cope with demand. No wonder patent trolls are after it already.