What Fire can do

Amazon doesnt believe in fighting small. With the Kindle,it took on the book. With its touchscreen tablet Kindle Fire,will it be able to singe or,do the unthinkable,destroy Apples mojo,the iPad? If Steve Jobss dream machine made you hanker after technology that you did not know you needed,Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a straight-forward business proposition: put the technology that you just about need in your pocket without burning a hole therein. At 199,less than half of what the cheapest iPad costs,Fire could be the gigantic disruptor in the tablet market where iPad has been the king of all it surveyed,where iPad killers came and went in meek acquiescence of Apples dominance.

Fire,weighing a little over 400 grams but sans a camera and a microphone,is meant to be the light,low-cost tablet for browsing. Amazon is,of course,betting on its captive audience the millions who come there shopping for books,movies,music and TV shows and would love to hold their purchase in their palm. Bezos is also going one up on Apple by throwing the cloud with the Fire: its pay-as-you-go Elastic Cloud Computing could change the pace of browsing and streaming. But then iCloud is around the corner,and Bezos would be watching out for possibly another mind-bending Apple launch,even without Jobs.

It is not that Fire is likely to kill iPad,but given that the Kindle and iPad are already so iconic,the new tablet could set off an industry-wide rejig. With the music industry having already changed in the last few years,now publishing and entertainment companies will be closely watching.