Barnes and Noble is preparing to launch a new Nook Tablet designed to go head-to-head with the Amazon Kindle Fire at $ 199. The Nook Tablet seems like a solid, capable device, but it is more likely to offer competition for Android tablets in general than for the Kindle Fire.

On one level it seems like it makes sense that the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire should be in direct competition. Barnes and Noble and Amazon are the two biggest rivals for book sales–both physical books and ebooks. And, Barnes and Noble and Amazon compete directly for the ereader market with the Kindle and Nook.