Ashok Kumar of tech analysis firm Rodman and Renshaw was interviewed by CNET’s Brooke Crothers Thursday, and told the CNET Blog Network member that all indicators point to sustained sales support for the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, and they expect Amazon to ship at least 5 million units in the December quarter (Q4) this year. Number crunching firm eDataSource recently reported they had used receipt information gathered from their block of over 800,000 inboxes to show that the Kindle Fire 7 inch tablet moved 95,000 units on their first day or pre-order availability.
Since then, the tablet appears to have steady sales of 20,000 units a day, giving them 215,000 units sold the first 5 days. And blog site Cult of Android says a “very reliable source” leaked screenshots showing 254,000 Kindle Fire units sold the first 5 days. Whatever the numbers, Amazon has to be ecstatic with the popularity of their very first offering in the tablet marketplace. To come out of the gates with their first tablet at a rate which is basically half of Apple’s tablet volume is more than Amazon could have expected.
Echoing revised sales forecast from other analysts in the field, Kumar upped his previous estimate of 4 million units for the fourth quarter to 5 million units. When asked why the change in his estimate of Kindle Fire units after just recently issuing his previous 4 million units number, Kumar said he made the change because Kindle has “received record preorders,” in his words.
It seems that the familiar Amazon marketing strategy of releasing a hardware device at around a breakeven point financially, and giving shoppers access to their wide range of digital content which is high-margin and low price is working in the tablet marketplace as well as it has in the eReader market. A recent tech tear down the showed that the Kindle Fire Tablet costs approximately $206 to manufacture per unit. Selling at a retail price of $199, which is $200 to $400 less than the competition’s 7 inch models, means Amazon is losing $7 per unit.
During their pre-order launch, Amazon is offering a free 30 day trial of their Premium Prime membership, which provides streaming video, and free shipping on items ordered from their retail site. Amazon also provides free Cloud Storage of all Amazon content on the Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire touch screen color tablet offers free Wi-Fi access, and at this time, a 3G version has not been announced. Learn more about this new Amazon tablet, including how to pre-order in our detailed Amazon Kindle Fire Review.
