If the Kindle Fire 7 inch color touch screen tablet were a human being, you could barely call it a toddler. Released in mid-November of 2011, in less than three months of that fourth quarter last year the first tablet offering from Amazon grabbed solid control of the number two spot in the entire tablet marketplace. That is something that seasoned consumer-electronics manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, Toshiba and others were not able to do with nearly a year of tablet products in the marketplace.
Buy the Kindle Fire starting for $199.
Research by IHS iSuppli Display Materials & Systems Service just released official numbers for last year’s fourth quarter, and the debut of the Amazon Kindle Fire was impressive indeed. Over 4 million Kindle models were sold in December, with the vast majority of those sales belonging to the Kindle Fire, making it the runaway 2nd best selling tablet for Q4 2011 by a mile. The debut price of $199 for the Kindle Fire put immediate downward pressure on Amazon’s competitors, and definitely gets credit for at least some of the popularity and sales success of the device.
The Kindle Fire tablet was also responsible for helping draw significant market share from tablet bigwig Apple, which owned 87% of the entire tablet marketplace in 2010. Thanks to the budget priced Kindle Fire, Apple’s market share dropped to 62% in 2011, a loss of 28%, something that has never happened before. Samsung barely hung onto the number two tablet sales spot for the entire year, with 6.1 million tablets sold, and the Kindle Fire came in third place for the year even though they were not even available for sales the entire fourth quarter of 2011. To further put the sales popularity of the Kindle Fire in perspective, in the fourth quarter last year the Kindle Fire sold more units than tablet manufacturers Nook and Asus moved the entire year.
The Kindle Fire tablet was successful in spite of itself, arriving on the scene in a size that Apple founder Steve Jobs called “too small”. The vast majority of the best-selling tablets before the Kindle Fire was released had 10 inch screens, at least one camera, and some form of storage expansion. Amazon took a gamble and released the Kindle Fire with a 7 inch screen, no cameras, and no storage expansion capabilities. However, Kindle Fire owners in actuality receive unlimited and free virtual Cloud Storage of all Amazon content, giving the Kindle Fire the greatest storage access and capability of any tablet. Buy the Kindle Fire for $199.
