The Kindle Fire HD launches tomorrow, upping the stakes once again in what appears to be a competitive mini-tablet market. As a media retailer, Amazon is well-positioned to take advantage of their tablets as media consumption devices. Though the original Kindle Fire wasn’t the most powerful tablet and ran on a very limited OS, sales were good enough that millions of the devices were sold.

This week, Digitimes Research analyst James Wang predicted that between the 7-inch Kindle Fire HD and the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD, Amazon will ship at least 5 million units this fall. Wang estimates that total shipments for the 7-inch model will top 2.9 million, while the 8.9-inch model will ship around 2.2 million units.

Wang estimates that the 7-inch model will ship 500,000 units in September alone, and close to 1 million in October. He also said that he expects the 8.9-inch version to sell around 3.5 to 4 million units before being “phased out of the market.”

This isn’t even counting sales of the upgraded original Kindle Fire at its new $160 price, or the new Kindle Paperwhite. Also, as Apple did not mention their upcoming iPad Mini at their big announcement celebration yesterday, the Kindle Fire HD will now get a head start on its competition. It seems Amazon might have done what no tech company in the past decade has been able to do: beat Apple to a new market (the mini-tablet, in this case) and establish a dominant foothold.