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If Amazon's Kindle Fire fails to shake up the tablet market and pose a real threat to Apple's iPad, it won't be for lack of interest. Only a lack of execution can stop the Kindle Fire from being considered a huge success, because at this point, Amazon is on pace to move a lot of units by the end of the year, and the Kindle Fire isn't even available yet.
You can, however, pre-order a Kindle Fire device, and many people have. Millions, in fact. According to DigiTimes, Amazon now expects to move more than five million Kindle Fire tablets by the end of the year. That's up from a previous estimate of four million devices, which itself was up from an even earlier estimate of 3.5 million Kindle Fire sales.
Note that Amazon's optimism is based on pre-order sales, and they continue to remain strong, even after Barnes & Noble announced a $250 Nook Tablet with better hardware all around. More RAM and more/expandable storage are both points in the Nook Tablet's favor, and one that many geeks will undoubtedly find worth the $50 premium, but for mainstream users, do the upgrades matter? It's too early to tell, but based on the high level of interest in HP's TouchPad following the fire sale, it seems as though price is what matters most.
Amazon was also wise to announce Netflix support on the Kindle Fire, which up until yesterday was an open ended question.
Image Credit: Amazon
Comments are closed on this article
Jonthomasdesigns
November 10, 2011 at 1:10pm
Amazon could put a turd in a box and i am buying it , I love amazon ... Like crazy passionate love
arch20002013
November 10, 2011 at 1:50pm
Could this be the start of the next Apple loyal type people? Thats what your comment sure sounds like...even has the same wording as an Apple fanboy, and describes the products too.
AntonioGarrison
November 10, 2011 at 5:12pm
I would rather Amazon be the next fanboy craze. I could deal with them alot better than I could Apples dumbass followers, damn hipsters.
arch20002013
November 10, 2011 at 12:39pm
I had the nook color and loved it besides the fact that it was laggy with the CyanogenMod. I was interested in the Fire until I found out there was no microSD slot, thus no easy way to put custom OS on it. Then, the Nook Tablet was announced and Im sold on it. To me Amazon dropped the ball on this with no expandable memory...Barnes and Nobel gets my money again.
firefox91
November 10, 2011 at 12:54pm
Agreed. This geek is going with the better hardware. I know the Kindle Fire is still going to outsell the Nook. It is cheaper and it has a bigger name attached to it. For the people that are not geeks that just want to use it as is, it will appeal to them more because they don't understand the differences. But for me, the amount of storage and the ability to root it was a huge deal. The battery life and the reduced glare screen is also significant.
arch20002013
November 10, 2011 at 1:49pm
I do understand what they are tryng to do, make a device as simple as possible to appeal to the customers that can barely turn on a computer but like the idea of a tablet. As you have stated, its not pushed towards us Geeks :)
