Kindle Fire Grabs Over Half of the U.S. Android Tablet Market

New submitter DillyTonto writes "Amazon got shelled by analysts and the press after releasing a buggy first iteration of the Fire edition of the Kindle e-reader. Three weeks later the Kindle Fire owned 14 percent of the whole market for tablets. Three months later, more than half of all Android tablets sold in the U.S. are seven-inch Kindle Fires, despite a huge bias among buyers for 10-inch tablets. How could a heavily modded e-reader beat full-size tablets by major PC vendors? It's cheaper than any other tablet or e-reader on the market, for one thing. Also important is its focus on being an e-reader, 'because people buy hardware to have access to one app or function, then take the other things it can do as an additional benefit.'"

Comments

Better Marketing

[pavon]

I think that better marketing, and tie-in to the Amazon eBook store also played huge factors. Otherwise the Nook Color would have dominated long ago, as it has all the same benefits they tout about the Kindle Fire, but released much earlier and was a more polished product at the time of the Kindle Fire release.

Re:Better Marketing

[Gideon Wells]

Not sure if marketing or just cultural perceptions. While it isn't so much now, MP3 players were effectively generically iPods for a while. EReaders (I need to look up how to handle eReader words at the beginning of sentences. That just looks weird) are to many Kindle. For some a tablet is an iPad. Until the iPhone came out it wasn't a smartphone, but a Black Berry.

This was the first color Kindle that was a Kindle. As the summary stated, people are likely buying an eReader instead of a tablet. I know people who are afraid to even sit down at a computer because it is a scary computer (they still exist) who see the Kindle Fire as a fancier and neat book.

Re:Better Marketing

[TechnicalExpert]

There's also the most insightful reason:

Because Android market share on tablets is so small compared to iPad. This makes "android tablet market share" (wtf?) easy to capture to begin with. If people are too poor to get an iPad but want a tablet, they will get the cheapest they can. With Amazon's subsidization (their business model is to make money by selling ebooks, not devices), they are able to sell their device at the lowest price point.

Basically, news about nothing.

Re:Better Marketing

[John Bokma]

Kindle Fire is mostly here a device to watch YouTube (and some downloaded movies). I think in families with (young) children a Kindle Fire is used more for watching YouTube than reading eBooks (also, we have two Kindle Touch for just that). I like it for that, my wife and I both love cooking, and somehow sitting on a couch together and watching a cooking video on YouTube is way nicer than watching the same movie on a laptop or desktop computer. Also, when cooking, one can keep the Kindle Fire close at hand, and follow the instructions.

I have a Kindle Fire, got it as a Christmas present. I think it's a fantastic device. The only downside is that I am not in the USA. When after a month a small defect showed up in the LCD Amazon cared a lot but was not able to help me out other than suggesting that I would pay ~ 140 USD to have my Christmas present fixed, see Kindle Fire outside the USA: fun while it lasts.

So, be warned if you're outside the USA and decide to import one yourself. You might end up paying for what adds up to an iPad. While I hope that Amazon will start selling the Kindle Fire outside of the USA, and hopefully within my 1 year of warranty, I somehow doubt this is going to happen. At least not with the current Kindle Fire. And with rumours of a smaller iPad I wonder if a Kindle Fire 2 is going to be an option for Amazon.

Re:Better Marketing

[MrHanky]

Right. The market share so tiny that a tablet can grow from 14% of the total tablet market to 50% of the Android tablet market, which implies at least 28% of the tablet market belongs to Android (this from the fucking summary posted above). You technical experts are pretty fucking dumb.

Re:Better Marketing

[artor3]

Fanboys aren't capable of performing cognitive tasks, such as arithmetic, when the love of their life is involved.

Re:Better Marketing

[drinkypoo]

If people are too poor to get an iPad but want a tablet, they will get the cheapest they can. [...] Basically, news about nothing.

You know, that would be insightful or interesting or something if you weren't completely wrong. There were and are cheaper android tablets and yet the Fire is still the hero of the day.

They answered the right question,

[Kenja]

that being "why would you want to buy a tablet?".

Re:They answered the right question,

[fermion]

When the refurb Kindle Fire went on sale I bought one as a second tablet. It does provide a level of functionality and infrastructure. On thing I did was cancel Netflix(maybe they support crazy people in the media) and just use Amazon streaming video. I have mostly Kindle book, which I read on many other devices, but of course maybe less easy to read on a sony or nook, but there is an app for android of course.

The point is, like a PC, Android tablets are going to compete mostly on price. Amazon gives us a cheap tablet with services behind it. I can upload all my music to Amazon and stream. I can keep my books at Amazon and download as needed. It is not fully functional table, but it is much better than anything else our there at the price point.

This write-up is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The Fire is not a 'heavily modded e-reader'. E-book readers are traditionally e-paper devices, the Fire is an Android tablet with e-reader functionality highlighted in the software. You can make a tablet an e-reader, but the other way around, not so much.

2. If more than half the Android tablets sold are 7 inch, then there is no bias among buyers for 10 inch tablets in that category. If you're talking about the entire tablet market, then of course it's 10 inch - the iPad still has more than half the tablet market *in units*.

All that said, the last part is spot on - it's being marketed as an e-reader with extra features (woo, color!), not as a tablet... even thought that's exactly what it is. A lot of people still don't know what they want from a tablet, but they know what they want from an e-reader. If it does more stuff, all the better. If they want a tablet... statistically speaking, they're already buying an iPad.

Screw Kindle Fire.

[pecosdave]

If I'm going to limit myself to a 7" tablet I'm going to get the Nook. Same processor, twice the on-board storage, twice the RAM, has an SD slot, just as hackable and can run the Kindle app.

Cost the same.

... and delivered at the right price

[perpenso]

They answered the right question, that being "why would you want to buy a tablet?".

And they delivered at the right price. It seemed that most other tablets were in the price neighborhood of the iPad, so people naturally just got an iPad because of the iPad's perception of having more features and apps. With the Kindle Fire coming in at such a relatively lower price they overcame this perception of the iPad.

I am an iPad dev and when I played with a Kindle Fire at a family Christmas dinner I thought it was a pretty cool device well worth the price, any performance differences or missing apps were more than offset by the price.

Re:... and delivered at the right price

[perpenso]

Curious to know how lacking was the perf., in your opinion?

It was just a subjective impression. The device was a recently unwrapped Christmas present still in a largely stock configuration. I only played with it for about fifteen minutes. My feeling at the time while navigating between the various built-in apps, giving each a quick try, and then navigating a couple of web pages was that it was not as snappy as an iPad 2, but I didn't really care. It was a $200 device not a $500 device and it was clearly "good enough". As an engineer I was impressed at what they managed with such an aggressive price point.

My cousin, the owner of the device, was quite familiar with the iPad 2, she often used her daughters, and had a similar impression. However she added that she loved the size, it looked far more convenient to carry around during the day to her.

Cut the euphemism

[Spy Handler]

despite a huge bias among buyers for 10-inch tablets.

What he really meant was, despite a huge bias among buys for the APPLE IPAD

Re:Cut the euphemism

[JosephTX]

Apple means 10 internet inches.

Apples to other fruits the color of fire

[xigxag]

Fire's list price is $430 lower than the list price of the latest edition of the iPad

Not $430 lower. $300 lower. (The $629 iPad is the 4G model, the Wi-Fi only model is just $499)

Kindle Fire is not bad, but too small

[rastoboy29]

I'm ridiculously happy with my Le Pan tablet, however, which for $200 is a steal.  Great viewable angle, phenomenal battery life, a good investment for my needs (casual web surfing on my coffee table).

Re:Kindle Fire is not bad, but too small

[Anonymous Coward]

And apparently it comes with monospaced fonts, which is great for those of us who miss telegraphs and typewriters.

Re:No...

[dmbasso]

I'm still waiting for the one that can display an A4 page without scaling.

Re:How is this surprising?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I dunno if I agree. The Galaxy Tab ain't bad, really. I prefer my iPad, but I don't have any real serious complaints about the Tab. It even has a few things going for it, for example I can actually get emulators through the market. Can't do that with Apple, not without jailbreaking anyway.

I do think it's a problem of marketing. If you go to Best Buy, for example, you get a nice big display of what the iPad can do for you. When you go to the next aisle, there's something like 20 machines somewhat iPad'ish in shape all with varying price-tags, but none significantly lower than the iPad. I think the casual shopper would walk past that aisle and think "ah, a failed-to-be-cheaper-clone."

$200 lower

[melted]

Let's compare the devices that are actually somewhat comparable: 2nd gen iPad is $399.

my guess

[pbjones]

low price because Amazon was selling at a loss or near loss, they want you to buy media for the Fire. They made an Android tablet that wasn't marketed as an Android tablet, but people hacked it into one, which is something that Amazon will block or the price will rise. Simply put, unmodded, it's average, modded, it's better than other Android tablets.

I received mine as a gift

[__aaqvdr516]

I had purchased a Nook e-ink refurb a few months before I received the Fire as a gift. I tried the Fire for reading for a few months and it became obvious that it was much more tiring on the eyes versus the Nook.

The rest of the functionality of the Fire was lacking, as you don't have access to Google Play. It was relatively painless to root and flash, so I went to CM9 (ICS) on it. CM9 is missing hardware acceleration, so I flashed CM7 (Gingerbread). It's fairly functional as a normal tablet. There is quite a bit of developer support on xda-developers.

Cheap and good enough beats state of the art...

[voss]

Which is why eventually the number of Android tablets will surpass the IPAD, even though Apple will still make
tons of money at the high end.

The secret of the Kindle Fire is that for now they have found the sweet spot of android tablets. A high enough price
not to be junk and a low enough price to compete against Ipad and the Fires secret sauce...the backing of amazon.com
who has the customer service and the money and wont cut and run which gives buyers confidence

Also Amazon.com unlike the other tablet sellers built up gradually from a successful inexpensive e-reader
  instead of just trying to come up with a "Our version of the ipad"

.

iPad 2 eventually $300 ?

[perpenso]

In the long run Apple may also be in the middle, not just the high end. If they follow the same pattern that they demonstrated with the iPod and iPhone then when a 4th generation iPad shows up at the $500 price point, the 3rd generation iPad may be offered at $400 and the iPad 2 at $300.

Of course I am curious as to why the original iPad was simply retired. Perhaps there were cost or performance issues in the long term.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and second...

[tverbeek]

...it has the words "DON'T PANIC" inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

Re:Low standards

[foniksonik]

You're going to wait how long?

That's dumb. We're talking about a few hundred dollars. You probably spent that much on a GPU in the last year or two.

I spent that much on lunch last month.

PDF is a problem. ePub is better.

Re:How is this surprising?

[obarthelemy]

First, Depends on where you choose to place your standards. Mine include standard ports, extensible/removable storage, and USB device/host mode. As you said, the Xoom is great at $299, especially with 64GB total, a dock, and a sleeve. An equivalent iPad would have set me back about 3x more, not including all proprietary cables and doodads, and extra Apps I've already purchased on Android.. I'm not sure what functionality you're thinking of.. it's sure harder and more expensive to connect an Ipad to/from stuff than a Xoom, with its standard ports, free UPnP/DLNA, cheap SDs, USB or Wifi keyboard and mouse and gamepad...

I'm really curious about what functionality you're thinking of, if you care to expand ?

Second, I don't really care about performance. I don't game in my tablet, mainly browse/read and watch video, so performance has been "good enough" for me for a while. I still have an original Nook Color, which I find OK too, though too small for at-home use.

Lastly, you overgeneralize: some Android phones have clearly superior features: my Note's AMOLED screen is both bigger, more contrasted, less tiring on the eyes, and more beautiful than the iPhone's unusable (to my old eyes), stamp-size, glow-in-the-dark LCD screen. Also, you seem to forget that Asus is also pushing keyboard docks that some people seem to love, and that quad-core is not only about performance, but also about battery life.

Re:There's not much of an Android tablet market

[drinkypoo]

being an Android enthusiast doesn't accurately cover someone who specifically avoids Apple products?

You have it backwards. Someone who specifically avoids Apple products doesn't adequately cover being an Android enthusiast. I'm using Android not because it's Android, but because it's not Apple, and indeed, because it's based on Linux. That means that I can do stuff with the Linux on it, when I'm not satisfied with the Android.

On the other hand, I am becoming an Android enthusiast because I'm actively using it now and enjoying some of the advantages of the ecosystem. But that's a whole other issue. I've been Anti-Apple for a long time. I have good reason, I've used a lot of Apple products.