Kindle Fire HD to be available in Canada in June

Canadians will finally be able to purchase Amazon's Kindle Fire HD tablet starting June 13, two years after the first generation of the device became available in the U.S., the company announced Thursday.

The online retailing giantbegan taking pre-orders for the tablets Thursday. They will come in two screen sizesseven inches and 8.9 inches and can be loaded with 16 GB or 32 GB of memory. The seven-inch, 16 GB model will sell for $214.

The devices run on the Android operating system and offer all the standard features tablet users have become accustomed to, including a touchscreen, a front-facing HD camera and a dual-band Wi-Fi connection.

Amazon said Kindle Fire users have access to one million apps, games and books through the onlineKindle Store and can expand their storageby storing content in the Amazon Cloud.

Only Paperwhite and basic Kindle available to date

Canadians have been able to buy thebasic Kindle e-reader andthePaperwhite model but not the popular tablet that offers access to the online entertainment that is dominatingportable devices more and more.

• Amazon launches Paperwhite in Canada

The Kindle Fire, which waslaunchedin 2011,was initially positioned as a cheaper alternative to Apple's iPad but has since had tocompete against tablet offerings from Google, Samsung and BlackBerry. Analysts have predicted that 2013 will be the year that Android tablets like the Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus overtake Applein terms of market share.

Kindle products have been late in reaching Canadaever since Amazon introduced itsfirst e-reader in 2007. It startedshipping Kindles to Canadiancustomers in 2009 (although with import fees) but only launched a Canadian ebook store in December 2012. Prior to that, Canadian Kindle owners had to buy content through Amazon.com.