Kindle Fire catching up to Ipad (24.5% of all tablets sold)

Don't you find it irritating when people just post a link to a link to an article, add some pointless statistics, and leave you to draw your own conclusions?

So, what's your point?

The Kindle Fire will do well for now but as soon as apple release a smaller iPad the fire sales will slow down.

Another note is that the fire and iPad are similar but yet very different. The fire is limited in capabilities and is more of an colour e-reader with extra perks. It cannot be used for anything productive.

homeboy said:

The Kindle Fire will do well for now but as soon as apple release a smaller iPad the fire sales will slow down.

Another note is that the fire and iPad are similar but yet very different. The fire is limited in capabilities and is more of an colour e-reader with extra perks. It cannot be used for anything productive.

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Define productive because both are primarily play devices. I wasn't aware ipads were for productive uses and the fire isn't.

Apples and oranges. The Kindle has always been doing well but for a specific different target audience. Chill!

arctic said:

Apples and oranges. The Kindle has always been doing well but for a specific different target audience. Chill!

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Exactly. They don't compete. I will soon have one of each. The Kindle is great for reading books, and some light app usage, while the iPad is great for heavier app usage, Magazines, etc. The web and email are painful on the Kindle Fire, it's much easier to use my iPhone, even with the smaller screen. OTOH, the iPad is too big to read with in bed in the dark.

Since Amazon and other Android tablet makers don't release sales figures how do we know what % of the tablet market they have?

Who cares about their share. It takes 2 1/2 Fire's to equal the sale of Apple's cheapest iPad 3, 2 Fires for an iPad 2. Amazon still takes a lost on each Fire sold. But Apple makes a profit on each iPad 2/3. So ya, it'll be like the smart phone race, Android will prob have more market share in a few years but they won't make anywhere near the cash apple is getting per tablet sold.

Amazon is banking on accessories (There isn't that many) & apps/ebooks sales and they take a loss on each Fire sold.

Apple is banking on hardware, accessories, and apps/ebooks sales.

Yeah Apple is scares.

Even if there comes a time when Android devices sell more than an iPad , Apple will still be banking more money than their competitors. If people want to be cheap and buy a cheap product who cares.

Those made-up stats are silly. These numbers are what matter:

iPad Sales

2010 - 14.8million
2011 - 40.0million
2012 - 62.0million (estimated)

This is a market that didn't exist 2 years ago, so trying to estimate what percentage of a growing market one vendor is capturing has little informational value.

There was never any thought that Apple would control 100% of this market indefinitely. And certainly not where there are dozens of competitors, many at very low price points.

iEvolution said:

Define productive because both are primarily play devices. I wasn't aware ipads were for productive uses and the fire isn't.

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Dont even get me started. I am far more productive using my iPad as I do (see my signature) than I ever was with an iMac, MBP, and kindle).

anthonymoody said:

Dont even get me started. I am far more productive using my iPad as I do (see my signature) than I ever was with an iMac, MBP, and kindle).

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It's a toy. Trying to force productivity on them is just that... it's fitting a round peg in a square hole.

BiggAW said:

It's a toy. Trying to force productivity on them is just that... it's fitting a round peg in a square hole.

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Lolwut?

I'm not forcing anything. It works, and better than the tools I'd used prior.

Troll FTL.

BiggAW said:

It's a toy. Trying to force productivity on them is just that... it's fitting a round peg in a square hole.

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How is it a toy, exactly, in a way that the Mac isn't?

What is more shocking is that while the fire is what, 1/4 of the ipad price, it is still selling far fewer of them. That tells me the marketplace has chosen to spend far more for a fuller-featured product with a larger screen.

I'd actually thought that the nook and fire outsold the ipad by a wide margin - just like with PCs vs. Mac, price is far less for pcs so they sell more of them even though the mac is a higher quality product - so this OP was a bit of a surprise for me.

If I was amazon or BN and was selling merely a fraction of apple's competing device even though I had priced it at 25% of the cost, taking a loss or breaking even up to this point - I'd be in panic mode right now.

This leaves apple, with its massive cash hoard, to start selling $99 7" ipads and completely blow them out of the market entirely if it wanted to. They are lucky apple doesn't habitually sell product with less than a 40-60% profit margin, but then apple might even face DoJ scrutiny if it did as I mentioned.

For the time being, this scenario reminds me of 1998-99, with M$ happy to keep an apple computer surviving on life support around just so that it can plausibly claim to the gov't that "there is competition in the marketplace" when in reality there isn't - and knows it owns the market for tablets.

Its basic economics, if my product cost $1 and my competitor's $4, but everyone is flocking to his, I'd better figure out how to start selling far more of mine, or I need to up-market my product to justify a higher price point, and right now and the for-seeable future, neither is looking to happen. Both BN and amazon would have been better off staying with basic, simple and light $49 ebook readers with email functionality added at most. Maybe then they could have challenged apple a bit at the low end purely on volume with an impulse purchase product, but right now, I'm not sure what future toehold in the marketplace they'll be able to retain if apple produces a sub-$200 7" ipad with the same functionality of its 10-inch version.

I think they'll be toast.

The fire pretty much sucks.

The Fire is selling well in it's target marget range. However I think overall tablet users stick to a market range more in tune with the iPad.

Both are great products, and both have their pros and cons. I will be sticking with my iPad of course.

Yes, the Kindle Fire is doing great sales wise. But it's far from an iPad killer. It's success is owed to it's attractive price point.

There can't be an iPad killer unless the competition has an app store that can rival Apples. Content is what really matters. Apps are king.

anthonymoody said:

Dont even get me started. I am far more productive using my iPad as I do (see my signature) than I ever was with an iMac, MBP, and kindle).

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Still doesn't answer my question and I find it hard to believe that the ipad has more productivity value than a mac, for one the absence of a file system on the ipad makes for quite a problem with content creation and modification.

For the price the kindle fire is a great side kick to a larger more full featured device, in fact I sometimes prefer it for typing activities because of the ability to reach the entire keyboard when held with both hands whereas I have to chicken peak with larger tablets (ipad 2/motorola xoom from personal experience). Perhaps my hands are small but I can't set either in landscape mod, hold with both hands and be able to reach the entire keyboard with my thumbs.

Yes I like the ipad better overall but for the kindle fire's price its a good entry for those who are leery about spending mucho on a full fledged tablet. In fact, the kindle fire is the reason I have a xoom and a ipad now.

Because the Kindle Fire is half the size of an iPad does that mean it has to sell twice as many units to equal iPad sales?

Right. Nobody cares.

Can't play Infinity Blade 2 on a Kindle Fire. Don't want it.

I'd like to see those sales numbers 1 month after the new iPad was released.

Those numbers are from Q4 2011 with a brand new Kindle vs. iPad model that's been out for 8 months.

Lets see the numbers now. I bet Kindle Fire's numbers are back down to 15% or less again.

Yes, iPad can't maintain it's 70% margin forever. But the tablet market is way different than the phone subsidized market.

Unless competitors present a tablet that they can make a profit on, it's very hard to make a dent unless you sell for at cost like Amazon hoping to make it up with selling other services.

By the way, Amazon had 13 billion in revenue. But only made 130 million in profit. That means their profit margin is razor thin.

EbookReader said:

Ipad: 55% of all tablets
Kindle Fire: 24.5% of all tablets
other Android tablets: 20.5% of all tablets


Which mean for every 1 Kindle Fire sold, 2.24 Ipad are sold.

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I believe This article only references tablets sold in the U.S., not worldwide. And didn't the best estimates put Kindle Fires sold last quarter at around 3.8 million, not 6, like some bloggers had been predicting? Problem with this whole thing is, no one except Amazon knows exactly how many Fire's were sold.

anthonymoody said:

Dont even get me started. I am far more productive using my iPad as I do (see my signature) than I ever was with an iMac, MBP, and kindle).

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That's understandable. Computers are too hard to use for lots of people.

ixodes said:

That's understandable. Computers are too hard to use for lots of people.

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If you go over and read his blog, you'd know that AnthonyMoody has a job that keeps him on the go a lot, which is why he finds iPad to be his most useful productivity tool. His usage case doesn't apply to everyone, but it's a good counter-example to people claiming that the iPad can't be a productivity tool.