After weeks of speculation, Amazon has finally unveiled its new Kindle Fire, a 7-inch tablet that will help sell its e-books and streaming movies and, according to experts, be the toughest rival yet to Apple’s iPad and iPad2 tablets. The main reason: its US$199 price tag.

Amazon’s challenge is unique in that it is not so much a hardware seller as one more interested in pushing its online services and e-commerce business through its devices.

The Fire comes with a ready suite of apps and services, such as its free movie streaming service to subscribers of its US$79-a-year Prime membership. Customers also get a 30-day trial Prime membership, when they take the tablet out of the box, according to Bloomberg.

Another plus for Amazon is that it is running Google’s Android operating system, which likely means it will be able to run a good number of apps in the market. Just a reminder: Amazon also runs its own Android store if you are not inclined to the regular Android Market by Google.

For an attractive US$199 tablet, there are trade-offs, of course. It doesn’t come with 3G, a camera or a microphone, as Engadget points out. In fact, early pictures show that it follows a rather simple Kindle interface that is aimed at doing one thing right – media consumption.

Unlike others before who have been keen to pack in more features into their tablets, Amazon has clearly done the opposite and put in as few extra options as possible to keep prices down.

Launching their own tablets earlier this year, Samsung and Motorola had pegged their tablets’ prices close to Apple’s current iPad 2, which starts from US$499. Yet, the challengers are still trailing the leader by a fair margin, because of Apple’s first-mover advantage in building an ecosystem of apps and developers, as well as a well-liked design.

Will the Amazon Kindle Fire work? I’d like to think it will gain traction. Just as an upgrade to the old Kindle, the new souped up version will be an attractive proposition to Amazon’s many e-book users. Even for folks who never wanted to buy a tablet in the first place, coming across the Fire’s US$199 price tag while shopping on Amazon or at a retailer in the United States will surely tempt their credit cards out of the wallets.

Think of the failed HP tablet. When the TouchPad was dumped on the market by the company for US$99, or S$118 here in Singapore, it easily sold out and HP had to make more of it to satisfy demand for what was essentially an end-of-life product.

Thus with its low price, the Fire looks set to move off the shelves in the coming months. Sure, it’s irritating to hear about another “iPad killer”, as the Fire will be called by many pundits, but it surely does look like a credible competitor.

For Singapore users, don’t be surprised to see local retailers bringing in grey imports in the coming weeks.

According to latest estimates by Gartner, a technology research firm, the iPad is expected to end the year with 73.4 percent of the global tablet market, down from 83 percent in 2010.

Android’s slice of the pie will increase from 14.3 percent in 2010 to 17.3 percent this year, thanks to the success of low-end tablets in Asia and expectations around the launch of Amazon’s Android tablet.

Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, said: “We expect Apple to maintain a market share lead throughout our forecast period by commanding more than 50 percent of the market until 2014″.

“This is because Apple delivers a superior and unified user experience across its hardware, software and services. Unless competitors can respond with a similar approach, challenges to Apple’s position will be minimal,” she added.

Milanesi noted that Apple had the “foresight to create this market and in doing that planned for it as far as component supplies such as memory and screen”.

This, she said, allowed Apple to sell the iPad at a very competitive price without compromising the user experience among different models with varying storage and connectivity options.

On the other hand, Android’s appeal in the tablet market has been constrained by high prices, weak user interface and limited tablet applications.

That said, Google is expected to address the fragmentation of Android across smartphone and tablet form factors in the upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich release, Milanesi noted. Android can also count on strong support from key OEMs, its sizeable developer community and app ecosystem that’s second only to Apple’s, she said.

As for other platforms, Gartner said RIM’s QNX is promising, though its main challenge will be to attract support from developers while the company is going through a tough period.

While Windows 8 has been in the limelight lately, its late arrival may limit its appeal to consumers as Apple and Android will gain even more traction by then, the analyst said, adding that Microsoft’s platform will be more popular with enterprise customers who will benefit from better integration with Microsoft software.

Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner, said to break the iPad’s hold on the market and meet Apple’s prices without sacrificing margins, rival tablet makers should not compromise on screen quality and processing power.

“They should consider everything else ‘nice to have’, rather than essential, in order to keep bills-of-materials costs competitive with those of the iPad,” he said.

As we roll into 2011, and a whole slew of new tablets are set to be launched at CES next week, I’m worrying a little for folks who are selling Huawei’s Ideos S7 tablet.

It’s running the older Android 2.1, said one of my techie pals, when I showed them the tablet over Christmas. Another said the screen looked washed out. I chimed in too, calling out Huawei’s decision to release a tablet with a resistive screen instead of a capacitive version that offers better touch sensitivity.

Is there any hope that such a tablet aimed at the low-end will succeed in Singapore? I think the main reason would be its price. It’s going for S$0 to S$198 at M1, if you sign up for a subscription plan with the telco. The retail price for the Ideos S7? A halfway-house S$548.

(UPDATE: Huawei has since revised the price to S$499).

It’s not exactly cheap if you buy it without contract, but then again, Huawei’s 3G-enabled, 7-inch tablet is still quite a lot cheaper than the 3G-enabled iPad which starts from S$928, and an Android-enabled Samsung Galaxy Tab that will lighten your wallet by S$998.

The Ideos S7 is not all bad, to be honest. When I powered it on and surfed the Web with it, it feels zippy enough, thanks to the proven 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. It also comes with Android Market out of the box, so there’s an easy way to get the thousands of apps available online.

Yet, there is a nagging feeling that there is something not quite complete about the Ideos S7. If you have ever used another tablet, or even a phone with a great screen, say, an HTC Desire HD or Samsung Galaxy S, you’d be hard pressed to accept the rather dull colours on the Ideos S7.

The other thing is weight. It weights a hefty 500 grams – a good 120 grams more than the 380-gram Galaxy Tab, a 7-incher just like the Huawei Ideos S7. When you hold the Ideos S7 for the first time, the weight is quite obvious and could be a turn-off for some users.

The other thing you’d notice is the line of buttons next to the screen. They light up and look like soft-touch buttons, like on the Galaxy Tab and many other phones, but they really require you to press down hard like good, old buttons of old. Confusion ensues.

What also irked me was the Ideos S7′s proprietary power supply port, which means you can only use Huawei’s charger and nothing else. Even the iPad and Galaxy Tab can share a 2-ampere car charger if you swap out cables that connect to the tablets, but no luck here with Huawei.

To its credit, the Ideos S7′s battery pack is removable, which is a boon to heavy users who often swap out batteries on the go. But again, cost seems to have come into the equation for Huawei engineers, who picked a modest 2,200mAh power pack, some way off the Galaxy Tab’s 4,000mAh. And the Galaxy Tab is lighter, despite the more powerful battery pack.

What I do like about the Ideos S7 is its metallic kick-stand, which opens up to two different angles to let you stand up your tablet for watching movies, say, on the plane. It’s something that’s missing on the Galaxy Tab and a number of other tablets, which usually require an additional case to do the propping up.

Another thing I like: the clean design. There’s no unnecessary bling here and the metallic-looking frame makes the Ideos S7 stand up to the rest of the competition in terms of looks – an important factor for many non-techie buyers.

Huawei has said it won’t be updating the Android 2.1 software here to 2.2, which means you don’t get full-fledged multimedia on websites running Flash. However, it did tell CNet Asia that later units to hit the shelves in Singapore in January – and not sold by M1 – would have the smoother capacitive screens, which is a big plus.

So, the bottomline for the Ideos S7? You should consider the Huawei only if you are want a low-cost tablet and want it right now. Out of the box, it is less attractive next to current, albeit costlier, offerings. In a few months’ time, it might struggle against similarly-priced tablets.

That’s because a lot more Android variants – including higher-end models from Huawei as well – are expected in the next few months, after they are unveiled at the yearly CES show.

Plus, Apple is said to be readying a followup to the original iPad, which could either be cheaper or could actually drive prices down for its older iPad in the coming months. That would make tablets like the Huawei Ideos S7 look rather unattractive.

Long before Apple and Samsung trotted out their tablets, the lesser-known Archos had been making what were known as portable multimedia players (PMPs), which worked sort of like tricked-up MP3 players with video playback.

Now, after being not particularly successful with early Android tablets, the French company is back with a couple of tablets you really have to check out before buying an iPad or Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Tab.

While buying some parts for a PC over the weekend, I found the Archos 70 and 101 tablets selling at Memory World and its other outlet Storage Studio at Sim Lim Square, and I joined a small crowd swiping our fingers over the screens of these two wonderfully portable machines.

Boy, was I pleasantly surprised after getting a quick hands-on with the gizmos.

For starters, look at the attractive prices:

• S$459 for the 7-incher 70 with 8GB
• S$499 for the 7-incher 70 with 250GB hard disk
• S$499 for the 10-incher 101 with 8GB (most popular, I’m told)
• S$599 for the 10-incher 101 with 16GB

All of them are Wi-Fi only and do not have 3G built in, which may be a good thing for those who don’t need mobile data, or can get it by tethering to their cellphones.

With the Archos 101, the bigger version with the 10.1-inch wide-screen, the first thing that hits you is how light it weighs in one hand. You can carry this and watch your movie on the train without tiring out your arm.

The specs say it is 480 grams, a good 200 grams or roughly 30 per cent lighter than the 680-gram iPad (Wi-Fi only model). On the hand, the lighter 101 really feels like a world of difference.

Looks-wise, Archos’ tablets are also much sleeker looking than the iPad and Galaxy Tab. Not just slim but streamlined, these feel like really thin computers that are perfect for surfing the Web or even reading e-books on.

The only thing is, the battery pack on the bigger 101 can feel a little warm. Though nowhere near your laptop’s warmth, it’s something you should look out for if you are sensitive to that. Archos doesn’t say how much juice the battery has, though it promises up to seven hours of video playback.

Under the hood, the 101 has the works: an 1GHz Arm Cortex A8 processor, support for all sorts of video and picture formats and a MicroSD slot that negates the relatively small 8/16GB flash memory for storing files. It also has a handy HDMI port to hook up to your TV if you want to watch movies stored on the tablet.

The same specs are found on the smaller 7-incher Archos 70, which to me, is just the right size and weight (just 300 grams for the flash memory model) to carry around. For some reason, the device also seems noticeably faster than its larger 101 cousin when I tried swiping my finger through the Android menus.

Speaking of Android, Archos promises Android 2.2 on the machines, but the tablets on sale at Sim Lim are still running Android 2.1, with promises of an update within the coming weeks.

That, to me, was the deal-breaker at the moment I was going to take out my ATM card to pay. To be fair, the devices are only to be officially launched in Singapore on Nov 17, but I held back from buying a device that may seem still in development.

Why does Android 2.2 matter? For one, I’d like Flash on the big screen. And, of course, the speed improvements that I have seen with the same OS update on my Nexus One.

Another thing to note is that, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Tab, there are no extra software, such as an e-reader and content that you may (or may not) like. Out of the box, the Archos gizmos are plain vanilla Android devices that probably require the user to download his own software.

Speaking of which, there doesn’t seem to be native Android Market support here. That means you either have to apply a hack or “sideload” the apps, that is, download them separately and install them by running the APK packages from your tablet.

Still, the Archos tablets look like they will give other tablets a run for the money given its low cost – once they are updated with Android 2.2. And they could really ruin the party for the upcoming Creative ZiiOs shipping here next month.

Unlike the Creative tablets, Archos’ two offerings appear to use capacitive screens, which are more sensitive and enable multi-touch. Strangely, the Memory World salesman told me the tablets use a special type of resistive screen that provides for what felt like very smooth pinch and zoom gestures, while Engadget says they use the now-common capacitive models.

Either way, at the prices they are sold, I expect these Archos tablets to stake a claim in the growing market, which will likely see new entrants such as Acer, Asus and Toshiba very soon. At the low-end, the Archos 70 and 101 will do particularly well, especially with their sleek design.

They’ll also be attractive to users who don’t want a built-in 3G link – I, for one, can tether with my Nexus One. With Wi-Fi b/g/n, the 70 and 101 will appeal as a device to surf or play games on while lounging in the living room.

With more competition in the horizon, and tablets running Google’s upcoming OSes made from ground-up for tablets, consumers may be spoilt for choice in the coming weeks and months.

If you can’t wait to lay your hands on an Apple iPad, head down to Lucky Plaza where the device was spotted at several electronics stores in the basement level. Prices are hovering around S$990.

CNET Asia’s Crave blog reported that the iPad is going for S$1,299 at one large 24-hour megamall, so Lucky Plaza might just be offering the best iPad prices in town for now before the device officially ships to Singapore.

Earlier this week, Apple said in a media statement that it will delay international sales of the iPad for at least a month due to strong demand for the device in the U.S:

“Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

“Faced with this surprisingly strong U.S. demand, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the international launch of iPad by one month, until the end of May. We will announce international pricing and begin taking online pre-orders on Monday, May 10.

“We know that many international customers waiting to buy an iPad will be disappointed by this news, but we hope they will be pleased to learn the reason—the iPad is a runaway success in the U.S. thus far.”