Amazon unveils 'paperwhite' e-reader, Fire still to come

Amazon.com Inc showed off the first of several Kindle gadgets expected to be unwrapped on Thursday, a "paperwhite" e-reader with a much sharper screen and longer battery life.

Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, taking the stage at a launch event in Santa Monica, California, is expected to unveil later on Thursday the new Kindle Fire tablet, which takes aim at a market dominated by Apple Inc .

The 3G wireless version that made digital readers mainstream will sell for $179 starting in October, in time for the crucial holiday season. A wifi-only version will go for $119, and the cheapest will carry a $69 price tag -- undercutting the cheapest Barnes and Noble Nook.

Bezos on Thursday stressed that Amazon saw the Kindle family of e-readers and tablets as a service, with hardware a critical element of its digital content business.

Amazon is competing with Apple, Google Inc and other technology companies for a foothold in the booming mobile-device market, because they are fast becoming the preferred tool to access consumer media over the Internet. As the world's largest Internet retailer, it is essential for Amazon to have a major presence in this new sector.

Shares in Amazon, which hit a record high earlier on Thursday, were up 1.1 percent at $249.