Amazon decided to join the Mother's Day race and announced that its popular 7-inch Kindle Fire HD tablet will be available for a discounted price.

After Barnes & Noble announced a special one-week-only offer for its Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets for Mother's Day, it was only a matter of time before rival Amazon followed suit and offered a deal of its own.

Under the new promotion, Amazon drops the price of the 16GB Kindle Fire HD tablet to $179 and the 32GB Kindle Fire HD to $209, down from their normal prices of $199 and $299, respectively.

For the sake of comparison, Barnes & Noble dropped the price of the 7-inch entry-level 8GB Nook HD to $149 (down from $199), while the 9-inch Nook HD+ in 16GB flavor is now available for $179 (down from $269). The 32GB Nook HD+, meanwhile, now costs $209 instead of $299.

Amazon's Mother's Day special offer will be in effect until May 12, just like Barnes & Noble's promotion. Amazon customers who choose the option Without Special Offers will see some discounts as well: the 16GB model will be available for $194 while the 32GB version will cost $224. Otherwise, the offer only requires using the FIRE4MOM as the coupon code during the checkout process.

For those unfamiliar with Amazon's tablet, the Kindle Fire HD sports a 7-inch display with a resolution of 1280 x 800, a dual-core OMAP4460 processor clocked at 1.2GHz and dual-band Wi-Fi, among others. The Kindle Fire HD also has full access to the wide variety of content Amazon has to offer: lots of apps, games, books, magazines, television shows and movies.

On the other hand, rival Barnes & Noble recently spiked its content offerings by adding Google Play for its Nook HD and Nook HD+ slates, which means access to more than 700,000 applications available in the Google Play Store.

In the end, it all comes down to personal preference and whether the buyer wants to join the Amazon or the Barnes & Noble ecosystem. Both companies offer good deals for Mother's Day, and while Amazon's price cuts may be less substantial, the Kindle Fire HD is one of the most popular 7-inchers available on the market.