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So Far, More Than 50,000 Kindle Fire Pre-Orders Per Day
An anonymous reader writes "Leaked screens from Amazon's internal stock monitoring and assignment system (Alaska) has revealed just how popular the Kindle Fire tablet is already. In just 5 days of being up for pre-order there have been 250,000 reserved. That's more than 50,000 per day or 2,000 sold every hour. If that continues to launch day Amazon will need to have 2.5 million ready to ship to meet demand. To put that in context, the original iPad managed to ship 1 million in its first month."
The key phrase seems to be "if this level of consumer demand continues" — but given the success of the e-ink Kindle line, that might not be crazy. Do you want one, or not?
I want one. Now. So count me in and take my $99. A hell with it, make it 4! One for me, my wife, two kids... damn. Make it 6. Labrador and chinchilla will have one too.
This is the first competitor to the iPad at the working-class level. It's priced affordably and contains most of the features people will actually use.
Is it as full-featured as the iPad, of course not, but you don't need $500-600 to get into one. This device could bring apps, cloud storage, streaming media, and these kinds of things down to a crowd that couldn't afford the pay the Apple premium before.
Some will gripe about there not being cameras or a huge amount of onboard storage, but for the average consumer, this will give them 80% of the iPad at 40% of the price
This device, at $200, can actually give people on limited budgets an entry way to using the internet the way more well-heeled people do. They can stream media, read ebooks, store music in the cloud, access the internet - it's hard to even find a decent netbook at $200, or at least one that performs well at all these tasks.
It could be something that allows the lower income into the web today, instead of the web as it was 5-10 years ago.
Because most people have a job. And $200 is not bank breaking for a lot of people. And because they don't give a shit about a walled garden.
http://xkcd.com/605/
"By your third trimester, there will be hundreds of babies inside of you."
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What make you think it will be stuck in a walled garden? Does Amazon prevent me from installing my own Android software on it?
for many of us who frequent a site like this the price point is spectacular.
I already own an iPad, what I am looking for is a smaller form factor. The only negative I saw with the Fire was no camera, but having an iPad and its crappy as not to be even worth having camera, I found I don't miss that. I have a real camera and a better one on my phone anyway.
To me this is the first real Android tablet at a price point I expected. I didn't want Android tablets trying to ape iPads in features and price. I wanted an good alternative in a package that is not cumbersome. Yeah, after a few months with my iPad it suddenly feels big. It certainly isn't being used for all the things I was planning to use it for, but the Fire will do that just as well and I can buy myself and my parents each one and still be under the price of my iPad. As for the walled garden, I am pretty much there with my iPad and I have seen articles claiming Amazon won't go out of their way to stop me from rooting it if I want.
Frankly, after all the years of Apple products I am tired of the price and getting really tired of the feeling I am locked in.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I think Amazon is being very clever with the Kindle Fire. It is a new device with tons of content readily available (more than iTunes, I believe), it is cheap and, most importantly, it is not a direct competitor to the iPad.
People who want (or don't mind) a 7" device will get the Kindle Fire. People who need a larger screen will go for the other tablets (mostly the iPad, these days).
I think the Kindle Fire will sell pretty well. And Apple will have someone else other than Samsung to get worried about.
I'm curious about the Kindle but some reviews I've read on amazon claim that its display size and its weak zoom function make it useless for typical university books (mathematics, computer science).
I have no first-hand experience, so could someone here enlighten me whether it's a viable alternative to paper?
I wasn't applauding it, I was just pointing out that both platforms have the same shortcoming.
And it's Stockholm Syndrome... I'm not sure what Helsinki syndrome would be... an insatiable desire for cabbage rolls and pea soup? :)
Apple essentially reinvented the market for tablet devices with the iPad. Which is a premium product being sold by a company with a reputation for premium products at a premium price.
Virtually every other major manufacturer looked at it, thought "Hey, we can do something similar" and started selling their product for about the same price - give or take maybe 5-10%. The likes of HP discovered the hard way that they do not have a premium reputation. But the Touchpad sale proved that actually there's huge demand there if the product can be sold not 5-10% cheaper than the iPad, but 50-80%.
Given the development time these things take and the sort of notice you have to give to a big factory to get thousands of anything, Amazon have probably been thinking this for some time.
Given the fact that it is an Android device, I have faith that it will be hacked fairly quickly, and you will be able to do almost anything with it anyways!
The iPad 1 is $299 (yes, that's "refurbished," but many people believe that's just Apple's strategy for price discrimination since Apple "refurbished" products are indistinguishable from new).
That's the real competitor for the Kindle Fire, and with over twice the screen real estate, twice the memory, and an infinitely better selection of apps than are available in the Amazon Appstore, for most people the iPad is likely to be the better purchase.
Probably...yes...realistically...Someone will root the device before the end of the month and CyanogenMod (LOL my auto-correct wants Carcinogenicity) will be ported to it days later. But yes Amazon would love to be able to prevent you from rolling your own since they are selling the Fire at a loss. They know the vast majority will not bother.
Amazon knows they need to get ahead of this iPod as media device trend and they also know they are WAY behind with little hope of catching up without making a concession or two in the short term.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
And...in all fairness, most people that I know that are on unemployment can scratch and save for a few months to be able to afford one. If they can afford iPhones and cable television an extra $200 isn't much.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
You want people pissing away money like this during a [dep/rec]ession.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"there is nothing that isn't becoming a lot less affordable"... except apparently excellent, inexpensive, computer-replacing tablets. Which is exactly tripleevenfall's point. It's three times easier to save up $200 for a Kindle Fire than a $600 laptop.
Hence the 'If".
Nobody has cracked one open.
If the chip is there, Amazon might have it just turned off.
Time will tell.
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