The tablet battle this week

Amazon entered the tablet battle this week, unveiling the Kindle Fire, a $199 tablet that will run on Google's Android operating system.

The Kindle Fire stole the stage on Wednesday when CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled Amazon's latest products, which as well included three new e-readers. At $199, the price is in effect what "Amazon gets right," Sam Dwyer of Econsultancy said. He added that it "enables consumers to have a different relationship with their device than what Apple's costs permit: rapid replacement".

The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal wrote that the online retailer is playing to its strengths with its tablet computer: "readers, cloud computing, e-retailing, end-to-end media services".

The other hand

On the other hand, Steven Levy of Wired called Netflix "possibly the biggest loser" and pointed out that Apple is not Amazon's only competitor.

Among the most interesting perspectives was that of Chris Espinosa, an engineer at Apple, who wrote on his personal blog that the Fire is in the "targeted direction of Google".

The device, he said, is "the first shot in the new war for replacing the Internet with a privatized merchant data-aggregation network".