Apple vs Amazon: Tablet battle heats up

The rivalry between Apple and Amazon has been an old one. It has been there since the day Apple launched its iBooks app, opening the floodgates of the e-reader market, earlier a monopoly of Amazon with its Kindle. Amazon now plans to lash back at Apple with its tablet.

Amazon has in fact decided late to enter the tablet market. One of the main reasons for this is its own successful Kindle that had been successfully selling until Apple provided the world with a leeway into the tablet market. But, Amazon has an advantage over all its competitors as it has tie-ups with almost everyone, including Google, Microsoft and even Apple itself. It has taken a pun on both Google and Apple by launching the Mac download store and Android appstore. Not only that, both of these tablets will be produced in the same country Taiwan with Quanta producing the Amazon Tablets and Foxconn and Pegatron fighting for exclusive rights to produce the iPad 3.

The Amazon Tablets would be having glamorous names – they have been codenamed Coyote and Hollywood. On the other hand, Apple has already oversold the iPad 2 and everyone is gearing up for the iPad 3. Although Amazon has wasted no time in publicizing its tablets, Apple has so far kept everything secret and one has to rely on rumors and speculations to know about the iPad 3.

So how do the two tablets compare. The Amazon tablet is rumored to have a 10-inch display while the iPad 3 should be having a similar 10.1-inch display. Unlike the iPad 3, the Amazon tablet would not be having a built-in camera.

Apple definitely has an edge in the screen resolution arena with its rumored 2560 x 1920 retina display that has the potential to outdo all its competitors. Both these companies would be using great processors -Amazon with NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, and Apple with the much talked about A6 processor chip. The earlier A5 chip faced overheating problems with the iPad 2, which A6 stands to eliminate.

According to the speculations, Apple should be launching a 128 GB iPad 3 while Amazon would be concentrating on 16/32/64 GB section. But Amazon is just warming up; it might enhance the memory feature in the future. Amazon hasn’t yet decided on an operating system for its tablets while the Apple iPad 3 would be equipped with the iOS 5.

Amazon plans to take a piece out of Apple’s pie by providing its tablet at $399 (Rs 20,000), much cheaper than the current iPad 3.

But the competition has already heated up with Amazon providing 3800 free apps and also free movie streaming in its initial models.

Both of these tablets are strong contenders, but which one will emerge as a market leader - we will find out in the next couple of months. Watch this space for more updates.