After yesterday’s Kindle Fire HD announcements from Amazon, a reader reminded me of a prediction I made at the start of the year: “If Apple gives up its position of industry leadership in 2012 the only company capable of assuming that role is Amazon.com.” I stand by those words — Amazon is really bringing the fight to Apple — but the most important part is “if Apple gives up its position” which it clearly hasn’t, at least not yet. The real loser here, in fact, is not Apple but Microsoft.

I could be wrong about this but I don’t recall any pundits (me included) predicting that Amazon would yesterday introduce a larger format tablet, […]