Reports are rife that the Seattle-based bigwig online retailer, Amazon, is apparently set to unveil its Android-powered tablet computer – most probably named ‘Kindle Fire’ – at a big press event in New York this week.

According to several media reports, including one from TechCruch tech blog, Amazon’s press conference is scheduled to be held in the Big Apple on Wednesday; but there has been no official disclosure about what it will focus on. Going by the details shared in the TechCrunch report, the shipments of Amazon’s ‘Kindle Fire’ tablet will begin in the second week of November. The tablet will reportedly have a 17.78-centimetre screen, which will be notably smaller than the 24.6cm display of the market-leading Apple iPad.

It is also being reported that the ‘Kindle Fire’ will boast an inviting, "user-friendly" user interface (UI), with a faster processor - at least 1GHz – which will lead to a much improved performance as compared to Amazon’s Nook Color e-reader.

Pointing to the fact that the Amazon ‘Kindle Fire’ will take on the Apple iPad, Sarah Rotman Epps – a Forrester Research analyst – said that Amazon will seemingly be “the only credible iPad competitor in the market” --- largely because of Amazon’s “willingness to sell hardware at a loss combined with the strength of its brand, content, cloud infrastructure, and commerce assets.”