As reported on the LA Times website, digital analyst comScore discovered some startling trends in Android tablet operating system market share that Amazon’s Android tablet competitors and tablet kingpin Apple may want to take notice of. Apple chief executive Tim Cook in February gave an open dismissal to “tablets like the Kindle Fire”, and called them inferior products to his Apple tablet lineup. Cook said at that time that cheap products may sell some early units because of their price, but then the consumers “get it home and use it and the joy is gone.” He said that, in his opinion, those customers re-experience a joyless product every time they use it until they “wind up not using it anymore.”
Buy the Kindle Fire for $199
Mr. Cook would be wise to take heed of the following information that comScore discovered. Having grabbed a full 54.4% of the Android tablet marketplace by the end of February 2012, only the fourth month of the Kindle Fire’s existence, that device nearly doubled the Fire’s Android market share since the 2011 December holiday shopping season. At that time the Kindle Fire Tablet enjoyed 29.4% market share of all Android tablets.
The $199.00 tablet is slowly and systematically devouring all the “small fish” in the tablet pond, easily outdistancing veteran consumer electronics manufacturer’s tablet offerings such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab (15.4% of Android tablet market share), the Motorola Xoom (7%), the Asus Transformer (6.3%), and all other tablet offerings from Dell, Lenovo and Sony. While that is definitely bad news for non-Amazon Kindle Fire Android tablet producers, the current breakdown of iPad to Android tablet market share is running neck and neck at 55% to 45%.
And with that iPad/Android tablet ratio, the recent data gathered by comScore means that 30% of all tablets being bought and shipped currently are Kindle Fires, putting the Fire intensely close to the iPad in tablet popularity. The gamble that Amazon made with the Kindle Fire was a huge one, offering it in what was then the less popular 7 inch screen size, with no cameras and no microSD slot.
However, the $199 price tag, unlimited Cloud Storage of all Amazon content and free 30 day viewing of streaming video through Amazon’s Prime Membership have evidently created a tablet Fire which still burns out of control, threatening to torch at least it’s Android tablet competitors, and at best the long-standing giant of tablet supremacy, the Apple iPad. Buy the Kindle Fire Tablet for $199.
