I was excited to hear about the launch of the new Amazon Kindle Fire last week… Who wouldn’t love a $199 tablet, except for the executives at Apple, Samsung, and Barnes & Noble?!  In launching the Kindle Fire, Amazon proves their validation that content is king… By offering this device at lower price point than any of its competitors (and likely not much more than cost of goods sold), Amazon is betting on  selling a TON of content to make up for its low hardware price.  It’s a smart strategy.

Here’s how Amazon’s Kindle Fire stacks up to its competitors from a hardware perspective:

Amazon already sells tons of digital books, movies, music, and more, and since the Kindle Fire is so cheap, there’s only a few plausible reasons why someone wouldn’t want to buy one:

• For users that own an existing Kindle, the Kindle Fire screen may not appeal. The screen looks good, but it’ll be harder to read in bright sunlight than the existing black and white Kindle.
• Battery life With the old Kindle, a single charge lasts up to two months with wireless off.  In contrast, the Amazon Kindle Fire only gets up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless off.
• Power tablet users including existing iPad and Galaxy Tab 10.1 users probably won’t be tempted to buy a Kindle Fire.  Either they’ve spent a ton of money on a high end piece of hardware that does similar things and lasts a bit longer than the Kindle Fire, or they may be turned off by the modified version of Android offered on the Kindle Fire.

Overall, the Amazon Kindle Fire looks like a great piece of hardware, and the Amazon Appstore is a great place to get digital content…. So, at $199, it’ll be hard for many tech-savvy consumers to resist.