KINDLE

Barnes & Noble Inc's expensive investments to keep its Nook e-reader competitive with Amazon's Kindle led to an unexpected quarterly loss for the bookseller, sending its shares down as much as 24 percent on Thursday.

The company notes the store will offer customers access to over 900,000 book titles in English and other languages, including 22,000 Spanish-language books.

Recently, a top tech analyst predicted that Amazon is likely to release its own smartphone for under $200 next year. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney said in a research note that Amazon may sell the smartphone for as little as $170. Citing supply-chain channel checks in Asia, he said Amazon may release its first-ever smartphone by the fourth quarter of 2012.

At Best Buy, the Fire is the most popular tablet, as noted on a list ranking the top 40 most popular tablets. Apple's Black iPad 2 with 16GB of memory is the second most popular and other models of the iPad 2 are rounding up the top 5 most popular tablets.

The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Magma Design Automation, Transcept Pharmaceuticals, Yahoo, Siliconware Precision Industries, and Melco Crown Entertainment. The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: Lululemon Athletica, ARM Holdings, ASML Holding, Intel, and Amazon.com.

Tablets are the new smartphones this year, and everybody wants the Kindle Fire or iPad. But two of the best available now are the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus and BlackBerry PlayBook. While they both have seven inch screens, the really only other thing they have in common is their excellent build qualities.

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), the co-chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said in a statement Tuesday he was unhappy about Amazon's answers to a letter he sent to the Seattle-based retailer last month asking about Amazon Silk, a web browser installed in the Fire tablet.

Barclays Capital said its checks indicate that sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday were quite solid for Apple Inc., largely in line with its expectations.

Samsung Electronics Co is set to resume selling its Galaxy tablet computer in Australia as early as Friday, after the South Korean technology firm won a rare legal victory in a long-running global patent war with Apple Inc.

Cyber Monday was on course to set another record for retail sales on Monday, as the strong start to the holiday shopping season continued online.

Sony's $500 Android tablet may need to take a cue from the HP TouchPad and the BlackBerry PlayBook and drop the price by a couple hundred dollars. Then it would be in a better position to duke it out with the Kindle Fire. Amazon does offer it for about $100 less, but even at that price, the 9.4-inch Tablet S is not as good of a buy as the Kindle Fire.

Shares of the Seattle-based retailer rose 6.44 percent to $194.15.

Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it saw a surge in sales of its Kindle devices, helped by its new Kindle Fire tablet, on the crucial Black Friday shopping day after Thanksgiving.

Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it saw a surge in sales of its Kindle devices, helped by its new Kindle Fire tablet, on the crucial Black Friday shopping day after Thanksgiving.

Apple, the world’s most valuable technology company, could double the number of iPads sold over the next year despite competition from new entrants, analysts say.

Customers purchased four times as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday, the Seattle-based company reported Monday.

Amazon Inc. has announced that this Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family, as the Kindle Fire remained the bestselling product since its introduction 8 weeks ago.

Even as the company seems to experience massive success, shares of the online retailer are down significantly from the 52-week high of $246.71, which was reached last month.

The Amazon Kindle is one of the hottest gifts this holiday season, but if you are looking to buy one, it might be daunting to decide which is right for you. Should you get the basic Kindle, Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, or Kindle Keyboard?

Amazon's Kindle Fire might end up being one of the most wanted items of the holiday season, and not just for tablets. It's $200 price tag has people's attention, but Kindle Fire is not like many of the tablets out there now. The Android tablet world has long suffered from comparisons to the iPad because iPad was the first tablet computer.

When the Apple iPad 3 hits the shelves next year, there could be several tablets that severely undercut its $500 price, but, until then, there are really only a few tablets that you would want to pick up to tide you over.