Kindle Fire Showing Other Tablet Makers How It’s Done
The Kindle Fire tablet appears to have hit a sweet spot in the marketplace between price and usability, much to the delight of Amazon, which has claimed over 4 million units getting into customers hands during the most recent holiday season, reports Eric Savitz for Forbes.
These sales numbers were enough to give the device almost one-third of the Android tablet market, as the shares of the Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer, and Acer Iconia Tab dropped to a collective 18 percent, writes Ars Technica’s Casey Johnston.
Kindle Fire also likely owes much of its success to its $199 price, hundreds of dollars below the rest with starting prices of $350 and higher. Tech market follower Flurry Analytics attributes the Kindle Fire’s growth to Amazon’s focus on an ecosystem and available content for users, similar to what Apple uses for its iPad, while other tablet makers focus on hardware specs.
Peter King, Director at Strategy Analytics, details some of the sales numbers by saying, “Global tablet shipments reached an all-time high of 26.8 million units in Q4 2011, surging 150 percent from 10.7 million in Q4 2010. Demand for tablets among consumer, business and education users remains strong.”
“Apple shipped a robust 15.4 million iPads worldwide and maintained its strong market leadership with 58 percent share during the fourth quarter of 2011. Apple shrugged off the much-hyped threat from entry-level Android models this quarter.”
Rohan continues his analysis saying, “We believe that software attach rates correlate inversely with the hardware price. From Amazon’s perspective, this could drive real upside in its North American media segment revenues. From a cost perspective, the shift to digital delivery of content could help Amazon avoid costly free shipping subsidies. Hence, we believe there is a great deal more to the Kindle device strategy than most have discounted.”
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