Amazon has unveiled a colour tablet computer called the Kindle Fire.
Price of Kindle Fire is fixed for $199 (£130) and device will run a modified version of Google's Android operating system.
Until now, the company has limited itself to making black and white e-readers, designed for consuming books and magazines.
As well as targeting Apple's iPad, Amazon is likely to have its sights on rival bookseller US Barnes & Noble, which already has a colour tablet.
The Kindle Fire will step in a hugely competitive market, dominated by Apple's iPad.
Amazon will be hoping to leverage both the strength of the Kindle brand, built up over three generations of its popular e-book reader, and its ability to serve up content such as music and video.
In last few years, the company has started offering downloadable music for sale, and also has a streaming video-on-demand service in the United States. Those, combined with its mobile application store, give it a more sophisticated content "ecosystem" than most of its rivals.
