Kindle Fire

Does anyone have any clues as to when the Kindle Fire will be on sale in the UK?

I don't think the original Kindle Fire WILL be sold in UK... The small budget-priced tablet market has gone nuts in the last year with better Android products than the Fire for less than it's ($200?) price tag. I guess Amazon are waiting for the Fire 2 or whatever it's going to be called before releasing in UK.

The strategy around the Kindle products is to sell the device cheap - virtually at cost, and make the profits on the downloads from the Kindle store... (there's not much profit in a £90 basic Kindle but with £50 of downloads in the first few months, THEN you're in the money..). They've missed the boat with the original Fire, so I think they need something considerably better to retain dominance in the e-reader market.

I certainly won't be rushing out to buy a Fire. What I like best about the Kindle is the prodigeous battery life and the display (and the price) - the backlit screen on the Fire won't give you that.

No point buying a kindle fire, when you can get any tablet (android or apple) and install the kindle app on it.

Hopefully they'll release colour e-ink one day so you get the benefits of the e-ink in readers with colour and a good battery life

I was thinking of the kindle fire (as it has colour) to download guide books with street maps where the colour is important. I'm not very technical so maybe there is a better way and just to use the Kindle to read books?

The kindle fire is just an adroid tablet.
You can buy any android tablet and install the Kindle app to do the same thing.
Even the cheapish chinese made ones will do the same thing. The difference is where the black and white kindles only need charging once a month, the kindle fire and any tablet device requires charging daily or every few days, because it uses an LCD screen and not the e-ink screen the black and white kindles use.

#3 "use the Kindle to read books."

Absolutely correct - that's what's it designed for and it's the best thing around for that - and the Kindle is my favourite travel gadget. It's not very good at flicking around between pages (and neither is a tablet by the way). Index? Forget it, and as for maps... colour usually isn't the issue - it's clarity in bright conditions which is where these tablets fall down. For travelling I prefer a cheap (or free) paper map which you can stuff in your pocket. If I'm going to a place I haven't been to before I might buy the Lonely Planet download on PDF format, just make a few notes and leave the slab of silicon in the hotel. Then I don't need to bother reading a screen in bright sunlight when I should be experiencing a new place.

I had considered getting the Fire for my young daughter, for picture books etc., but there are plenty excellent 7" Android Tabs now for a lot less than the price of the Fire. The Kindle was a game changer for Amazon - the Fire isn't.

The next iteration of the Kindle Fire (supposedly due before the end of the year and won't be called the Kindle Fire II) is supposed to be available in the UK as well as other countries.

I plan on getting one for the magazine subscriptions.

In the meantime, I would just periodically check the tech news sites for updates.

#6 again, any tablet right now can do magazines. The kindle fire versions are not special in any way. Only the black and white ebook readers are different and better for reading. You can get magazine subscriptions on ipads and android tablets easily.

True but the price point is hard to ignore.

"the price point is hard to ignore."

Correct, which is why the original Kindle Fire wasn't released in Europe (I think...). By the time they were ready to launch, the ($200+?) price tag was looking too expensive (surprisingly) compared to some very capable Android tabs coming onto the market. Brand loyalty will only take you so far. Unlike the justified success of the original Kindles, I don't hear Amazon boasting about the sales figures for the Fire.. 'cos they're not there, and it's not a unique device.

It's a fiercly competitive market and if Amazon pitch into the middle they will probably fail... They have to decide whether to go cheap-cheap and rely on subscribers buying lots from the Kindle Store to turn a profit on the sale of the machine, or they go for a high-end, high spec, very capable device where the competitors are Apple and Samsung and Google and Microsoft... a pretty tough place for a book company.

Don't forget the Google tablet. Same price point as the Kindle Fire.

Plenty of cheap android tablets running the old version of Android with 8GB memory for much less than the Kindle fire, so the price point is not an issue. The real issue is people are just unable to comapre things properly.