Amazon has announced their popular Kindle Fire tablets will be coming to the UK for the first time.

At a launch event in Santa Monica, California, the company showed off 7in and 8.9in versions of the Kindle Fire HD, a brand new Android tablet that features a high resolution display and Dolby surround sound. The company also announced an update to their Kindle Fire, as well as a new version of their ereader, Kindle Paperwhite, now with an illuminated screen to help users read in the dark.

And the great news for British consumers is that the 7in Kindle Fire HD will be available in the UK from the end of next month, priced at £159 for the 16GB version.

Amazon's chief executive Jeff Bezos stated that the tablets were value for money:

"We are not building the best tablet at a certain price; we have just built the best tablet at any price. Let me pull this together for you, is what we are trying to do, it is very straightforward. We want to have the best hardware, the best prices, the best content, the best operability and the best customer service."

The Kindle Fire is currently second in the US tablet market after the dominant iPad, and in an apparent dig at Apple Bezos said that it was providing content, rather than hardware, where Amazon seeks to succeed.

"We want to make money when people use our devices, not when they buy our devices. That is better alignment. If somebody buys one of our devices and puts it in a desk drawer and never uses it, we don't deserve to make any money."

By bringing the devices to the UK Amazon appears to be challenging Apple's worldwide dominance of the tablet market. Recently companies such as Google and Microsoft have entered the field, unveiling their respective Nexus 7 and Surface tablets earlier this year.

Written and presented by Alfred Joyner