Analysts from Goldman Sachs are reporting that Internet retailer Amazon, could sell 6 million units of its newly released Kindle Fire tablet by the end of this year.
The same analysts are expecting sale figures of around 8 million for its other ranges – including the new Wi-Fi Kindle and 3G version – making an eye-watering total of 14 million for the fourth quarter alone.
Goldman is also projecting that Amazon will sell between 15.5 million and 20.5 million units of the Kindle Fire in 2012.
The Kindle’s low price and ease of use are just some reasons why the Kindle has been a sales hit so far. It’s a perfect storm for Amazon: consumers wanting a tablet experience coupled with times of austerity is making the Kindle a big hit over the pond.
The cheap price and the focussed functionality are all being credited for the recent surge of Fire’s sales the analyst said – despite the fact it lacks a lot of the functionality many other tablets offer.
“While the Kindle Fire certainly doesn’t have the breadth of functionality of the iPad (no camera or microphone, shorter batter life and less memory). It does do a few things very well, which just happed to be the few action that users utilise the tablet form factor often for, in our view,” said the report.
Another report from IHS iSuppli said that the Kindle Fire has already eaten into Apple’s massive market share. The report projected that in just one quarter of being on sale it would finish fourth with 14 per cent of the total tablet market, impressive enough especially considering it’s only available in the US. The report did note that Apple still command 66 percent of the global tablet market.
There’s still no official word on when we might see the Kindle Fire on UK shores, unfortunately it’s not a case of just making them, Amazon needs to get the same media deals in place before it can be released, when that will be is anyone’s guess.
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