Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon at press conference on Sep. 6, 2012 in Santa Monica, California.

For the last two years, Amazon.com (AMZN) has scraped and clawed its way to a relatively minor position in the exploding tablet market. Its Kindle Fire tablets, which plug directly into Amazon’s own media and e-commerce services and run a heavily customized version of Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system, have set a low threshold for tablet pricing and helped to spark a wave of small, 7-inch imitators, such as Apple’s (AAPL) iPad Mini.

Yet while Amazon has helped to change some of the rules of the tablet game, it’s hardly winning. Data tracking firm IDC puts the company’s share of the U.S. tablet market in the second quarter at 4.6 percent, compared with the iPad’s 50.7 percent (Samsung (005930:KS) has 18.5 percent), and says Amazon’s global market share is negligible.

Now, Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is making his boldest tablet bid yet, with a triumvirate of new Kindle Fire models that boast a few nifty new features, some extra computing muscle, and the disruptively low prices for which the company is known.

The basics: Amazon will offer a lower-end 7-inch Kindle Fire HD for $139, a new 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX starting at $229, and a larger 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX starting at $379. The HDX models come with both front- and rear-facing cameras, enhanced screens that show vivid colors in light and dark settings, and have additional options for 4G wireless connectivity on AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) networks. They are lighter and faster than the previous generation—running Qualcomm’s (QCOM) Snapdragon 800 processor—and have about 11 hours of battery life.

The HDX devices also have a unique customer service feature, called Mayday, which owners can use to summon a live video feed of an Amazon customer service representative onto their screen at any time of day to help them navigate their device and fix problems.

“When beta users discover and use this feature, their jaws hit the table,” says Bezos, who spent two days this week briefing small groups of journalists on Amazon’s new hardware lineup in lieu of a single large media event. “They are not expecting to have a tech support person appear on their screen, and once that happens they are not expecting the tech support person to actually draw on their screen.”

Customers can order the new Kindle Fires today on Amazon’s website. Some models will start shipping in mid-October. Bezos says Amazon’s mission “is to develop premium products at non-premium prices.” He spoke with Bloomberg Businessweek about the new tablets, his August acquisition of the Washington Post, and the meeting he couldn’t sit through.

What were the biggest lessons from the successes and the failures of the first two generations of Kindle Fires?

The big surprise from the first generation was how frequently families and kids used it. So we doubled down on that with things like Kindle FreeTime [a feature that lets parents control how their kids access their tablets]. And then I would say the biggest surprise from the second generation was how much it was purchased by and used by corporations and enterprises. So we have really doubled down on all the productivity elements, such as interfacing with Microsoft (MSFT) Exchange services, doing a VPN [virtual private network] really well so you can get on the corporate intranet, and encryption of data. People don’t want both an entertainment and a corporate work tablet. They want one tablet. So we have doubled down on that.

Retailers like Wal-Mart (WMT) and Target (TGT) have stopped selling the Kindle Fire due to competitive concerns. Does that hurt this product’s prospects?

We still have over 20,000 retail outlets in addition to Amazon.com. I think our percentage of units sold through retail has actually gone up year over year. And that is global, by the way. All over the world, we have thousands of retail outlets.

I imagine some Kindle Fire owners would love to access Gmail, Google Maps, or Chrome from Google, or, for that matter, iTunes from Apple [those companies currently do not make many of their apps available in Amazon’s Appstore]. What are the prospects of getting those and turning the Kindle Fire into a more open platform than it is today?

We are open to that, but I don’t want to speculate on the future.

BlackBerry had earlier announced exchange offer on Z10 as well under which it was offering up to Rs 11,000.

BlackBerry, in order to attract buyers, has reduced price of its Z10 smartphone. The BlackBerry Z10 is thus available from many online retailers for as low as Rs 29,990 while before this it was selling for around Rs 35,000. You can buy the phone at the reduced price till Diwali this year.

"Keeping in mind of this festive season, we have reduced the price of BlackBerry Z10 to Rs 29,990," said a BlackBerry spokesperson to The Mobile Indian.

BlackBerry had earlier announced exchange offer on Z10 as well under which it was offering up to Rs 11,000.

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BlackBerry Z10 was launched in India in February this year for Rs 43,499. features a 4.2-inch LCD touchscreen display with 1280x768 pixel resolution. nside its 9 mm chassis, rests a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8960 mobile processor, 2 GB RAM and 16 GB on-board storage. It has a micro SD card slot as well.

At the rear, BlackBerry has packed an 8 megapixel camera with auto focus, LED Flash and 5X digital zoom. This camera can be used to capture high quality images and also record full 1080p HD videos. BlackBerry Z10 also features a 2 megapixel front facing camera with 3X digital zoom and 720p HD video recording ability.

Apart from that, the BlackBerry Z10 packs dual-band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, Gyroscope, Magnetometer, Ambient Light Sensor and Near Field Communication chip. There is also a micro HDMI out port along with micro USB port.

BlackBerry Z10 come packed with an 1800 mAh battery that promises talk time of up to 10 hours and standby time of up to 305 hours on 3G network. This smartphone promises audio playback for up to 60 hours and video playback for up to 11 hours

The 16GB storage variant of the 7 inch tablet comes with a revised price tag of Rs 11,999 (original price: Rs 15,999) and the 32GB storage variant on the other hand comes with a new price tag of Rs 15,999 (original price: INR 18,999). Amazon Kindle Fire HD comes with a 7-inch display with 1280x800 pixel resolution. It weighs around 395 grams and is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor and Imagination SGX540 GPU. It features a 1GB RAM and 4400mAh battery which supports up to 11 hours of backup. Other features fostered by the tab are: Dolby Audio with dual stereo speakers, a front-facing HD camera, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. It runs on a customized version of Android 4.0.3. App can be downloaded on the device through Amazon's Appstore.

JPN 

New Delhi: Amazon has announced expansion of its Appstore for Android to nearly 200 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City.

The company has asked developers to submit their apps for distribution in those countries.

These apps will be made available in the coming months when the Amazon Appstore for Android launches internationally for consumers. Registered developers who want international distribution will have their apps automatically made available for download, unless they designate otherwise.

This international expansion is the latest in a series of Amazon Appstore for Android launches, which have included the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

P2 Games is a UK based publisher of interactive games. "We launched our Kindle Fire version of Peppa Pig in January 2013 and within a couple of weeks we saw the sales on Kindle Fire overtake Google Play to a factor of four or five times," said Peter Sleeman, Director, P2 Games Limited.