It seems that somehow, most rumors about Amazon’s product lineup for the holiday 2012 shopping season were proven to be correct. The main star of Amazon’s recently-concluded launch event was undoubtedly the Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE, an 8.9-inch tablet that is positioned exactly against Apple’s dominant iPad.

Photo credit: Amazon

Surprisingly, Amazon isn’t planning to sell its latest tablet at a cut-rate price and making most of its profit from selling services. Instead, the LTE-equipped device will cost the same $499 that Apple charges for its iPad.

This also buys you a 1080p display with 254ppi screen density, a dual-core Texas Instruments OMAP 4470 chipset, an HD front camera and dual-band WiFi. The device gets its 4G capabilities through an AT&T package that costs $49.99 a year for 250MB of data each month.

The Kindle Fire HD 4G LTE should ship on November 20.

If that’s a bit too rich for your blood, there’s also a 8.9-inch non-LTE Kindle Fire HD without the cellular connectivity, which starts at $299 for 16GB of storage.

If even that’s too expensive, buyers can always go for a 7-inch Kindle Fire HD, which would cost $199, or an updated version of the original Kindle Fire that would cost $159. The biggest difference between the 8.9-inch and 7-inch models is their screen resolution. The 7-inch HD packs a 1280 x 800 display, while the lowest-end model has the same 1024 x 600 panel as its immediate predecessor.

Amazon’s tablets have typically been a value proposition, and the inclusion of 4G LTE connectivity on its highest-end tablet may just be what it needs to put up a good fight against the iPad. The 8.9-inch models’ 1080p screens don’t hurt, either.

However,, the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD may not have the sheer processing grunt to battle against the Nexus 7, which is probably the most popular device in the budget tablet segment.