By Brittany Hazelwood

Consumer electronic giants Sony and Amazon dominated Thursday’s digital chatter with concurrent new ventures into the E-reader and Tablet markets.

Amazon’s Wednesday announcement of a reduced price $139 AT&T 3G Kindle became an afterthought after the speculation of an Amazon-tablet was confirmed. The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon will be releasing its own tablet computer by October of this year, thus “intensifying its rivalry with Apple’s iPad.” However, according to the WSJ, “Amazon faces a tough road against Apple in the tablet market.”

Biting at the heels of the Amazon announcement was Sony’s news of rebooted and upgraded e-book readers to premier as early as next month. Bloomberg reports that the new line of E-readers from Sony will find their U.S. introduction just before Sony’s first tablet-computer models hit store shelves later this year.

Read Full article at the Wall Street Journal here.