Amazon’s Kindle Fire: It’s so hot right now.
According to one market researcher, the Amazon has already sold 850,000 Kindle Fires directly from Amazon.com. When you factor in sales from other retailers like Best Buy, he says that Amazon has likely sold 2 million or more units since its official launch on November 15th. Two million in two weeks is a pretty strong start for the new tablet.
According to that analyst, Carter Nicholas of eDataSource, the swing in sales from the pre-sale period to the post-launch period has been substantial. “Trendwise, sales are picking up if you compare second half of November to second half of October, the rate of sales is up 63%.”
Amazon has been unsurprisingly tight-lipped about the actual Kindle Fire sales figures. The only real information nugget that they’ve given us about the tablet is that it’s a top seller. Actually, the top seller across the whole site. As part of a press release concerning Black
Friday sales, Amazon reported that all members of the Kindle family were off to a great start this holiday season – the Kindle Fire in particular.
“Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we’d already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com,” they said. The Kindle Fire has been the top-selling item on the site since in was introduced way back in September.
So it looks like the Kindle Fire, with its experimental Silk browser and super-affordable $199 price tag, is on its way to becoming a real holiday hit. And if these figures prove accurate, it’s well on its way to grabbing the number #2 tablet spot.
Of course, it would still be behind the king – the iPad. Is it possible that the Kindle Fire could significantly cut into the iPad’s market this holiday season? That depends on your definition of the word significant.
J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz is slightly reducing his iPad sales estimate this quarter. He is shaving them down to 13 million, from 13.3 million. This relatively small decrease is being attributed to not only production slowdowns – but the impact of the Kindle Fire. Apparently, the $199 price tag is the leading factor in people’s decision to go with the Amazon tablet.
But price tag isn’t everything, and the Kindle Fire can’t fully compete with the the iPad on a lot of fronts – speed and features mainly. But there’s no doubt that the Kindle Fire is off to a hot start. Have you had the chance to try out Amazon’s new tablet? What do you think? Let us know in the comments.