is redesigning its website in preparation for its new $250 tablet debut intended to rival the Apple iPad.

The differences in Amazon’s online store compared to its previous design “practically scream ‘tablet-optimized‘,” Sarah Perez, a TechCrunch blogger, wrote this weekend after her site reported seeing a prototype of Amazon’s new device.

The updated web pages have a larger search bar and are less cluttered in order to better focus attention on the music, e-books, digital games and applications from Amazon’s Appstore using the , the blog said.

An Amazon spokeswoman, Sally Fouts, said in an email Sunday, the company began rolling out the new design in the final days of August.

“We are continuing to roll out the new design to additional customers, but I can’t speculate on when the new design will be live for everyone,” wrote Fouts.

The world’s biggest online retailer, Amazon is introducing the new site redesign and tablet device as the company ventures out beyond its original business model of selling through personal computers, to reaching out to customers through the type of mobile communications which are becoming increasingly popular.

It’s important, too, for Amazon to get more mobile devices into the hands of its customers, one of its chief aims being to facilitate making purchases which will in turn, hopefully, increase impulse buying.

The new tablet being developed by Amazon, geared especially towards playing music and movies from the Internet, will have a 7-inch (17.8-cm) back-lit screen, making it smaller than an iPad and approximately the same size as the PlayBook from Research in Motion, TechCrunch said.

Having played around with one of the testing prototypes, TechCrunch reported Amazon intends to offer Amazon Prime — a $79-a-year Internet streaming service — for free to customers who purchase a tablet.

The new tablet, being the Internet retailer’s first foray into the arena of tablet computing — its functions more as an e-book reader — has been promoted as a serious competitor to Apple, whose popular iPad 2 prices start at $499, according to the company’s website.

Amazon’s new tablet device will be Wi-Fi only and will have a color touchscreen, but will be limited to 6 gigabytes of memory, the techblog reorted.

Apple’s large tablet market share has only been minimally affected by Samsung and Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard threw in the towel when it announced it was discontinuing its TouchPad after one more final production run. And this past week, Sony added its Tablet S  to the mix, unfortunately to poor reviews.

Analysts have been optimistic about Amazon’s new gadget, if it beats out the iPad’s price. Forrester Research estimates it could sell up to 5 million tablets in Q4, making it Apple’s top competitor. Currently Apple sells between 7 million and 9 million tablets per quarter.

(Via: LA Times)