Just a day after Amazon’s Kindle Fire was launched in the market, the trade analysts already estimated a rough sales estimate for the device in the upcoming holiday season: a near about 2.5 million Kindle Fires were sold in the fourth quarter, which clearly shows a dent in the tablet market, but nothing which can be a cause of worry for the market leader Apple.
How Does the 4 Million Benchmark Sounds?
The Gene Munster’s analyst, Piper Jaffray has increased his estimates for the expected Amazon’s sales of Kindle Fire, in the fourth quarter. The favorable factors making such a change in the prediction are the combination of low price of the device and the competitive feature. It is believed that Amazon is actually losing money on each of the Kindle Fire sold, just to maintain the low price limit.
“Overall, we believe the iPad offers a superior user experience to the Kindle Fire, but note that for $200, the Kindle Fire delivers as much or more than many other competitors,” wrote Munster in a November 18 note.
However even the world of analysts appears dicey and uncertain about the downright popularity of Amazon’s tablet. Trip Chowdry, an analyst working with the Global Equities Research, has limited the Kindle Fire’s predicted fourth quarter sales to an initial level of 1 million devices. Chowdry feels that the Kindle Fire is just not an iPad as it has very few features and even fewer sensors, and falls short on the design and functionality which was hither to the USP of Apple devices, something that made them sell over 32 million devices, worldwide.
“Every indication we have as of right now, tells us that it is very likely that Amazon Fire may end up having the similar fate that RIMM’s PlayBook had,” said Chowdry in an interview with eWeek’s Clint Boulton. “A Lot of expectations, lot of sell-ins but very weak sell-through.”
And now it is imperative to understand what consumers feel about it. With reference to the nationwide survey conducted by Retrevo, an electronics review site, of 1,000 different individuals, the consumers mindset were solicited both for Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle Fire in context with the approaching holiday season. Only about a 10% said that they are looking forward to get the iPad for this holiday season whereas the next 10% showed their support towards getting the new Kindle Fire.
The result shows equal set of opportunities for both the options and these results are considerably less shocking than the previous Retrevo survey on a different set of 1,000 which revealed that 69% of the surveyed individuals wised to obtain a tablet this season. And amongst these 1,000 individuals, a mighty 44% suggested that they would buy a Kindle Ire in place of an iPad 2.
