Amazon Takes a Swing at the iPad Mini

Amazon Takes a Swing at the iPad Mini

By Matthew Lynley

Amazon has begun advertising the Kindle Fire HD, its 7-inch $199 tablet, on the home page and included blow-by-blow comparisons with Apple's more expensive 7.9-inch iPad Mini.

Apple’s executives have been critical of 7-inch tablets like the Kindle Fire HD. Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated that on its most recent earnings call: “Let me be clear, we would not make a 7-inch tablet. We don’t think they’re good products.”

While Apple has touted the size of the iPad Mini as an advantage over the Kindle Fire HD and other smaller 7-inch tablets, the iPad Mini also sports a lower resolution than some of those tablets, coming in at 1,024 by 768 pixels, or 163 pixels per inch. The Kindle Fire HD has a sharper display, with about 216 pixels per inch.

Amazon’s tagline is, “much more for much less,” zeroing in on the difference between the price of its tablet and the $329 iPad Mini, and the screen comparison.

In a statement to AllThingsD, Amazon said “Wednesday was the $199 Kindle Fire HD’s biggest day of sales since launch and up 3x week over week.”

The major advantage Apple has over Amazon and other tablet-makers, however, is that the iPad Mini launches with 275,000 apps supporting it, because it has the same resolution as the iPad 2. Amazon’s tablet, and app ecosystem, is still much newer.