Amazon Kindle tablet sales projections cut in half, still likely to be No. 1 Android tablet

By on Sep 14, 2011 at 10:20 AM
Tablets September 14, 2011

Even with sales estimates that creep closer to reality, Amazon’s Kindle tablet is poised to become the best-selling Android tablet to date when following its launch later this fall. In a note to investors, Barclays analyst Anthony DiClemente offered up what is seemingly a more realistic sales projection than prior estimates: 2 million units in 2011. An earlier report claimed Amazon is looking to sell 4 million Kindle tablets this year, and Forrester went even further to project sales of up to 5 million units. With most other tablet vendors thought by some to be spinning their wheels, Amazon’s tablet could quickly become the top contender in a market dominated by Apple’s iPad. Read on for more.

According to a report from earlier this month, Amazon’s premier Kindle tablet will launch this coming November for $250. If accurate, Amazon’s offering will be available for less than two months this year, but holiday shopping and an extremely aggressive price point could certainly see sales climb into the millions. HP’s fire sale on its failed TouchPad tablet proved that consumers are eager for an affordable tablet option. While $250 is a far cry from $99, it still undercuts Apple’s iPad by at least 50% and could pique the interest of legions of holiday shoppers already familiar with Amazon’s Kindle eReaders and the retail giant’s range of digital services.

DiClemente thinks adoption of Amazon’s affordable tablet will remain solid next year, with 6.4 million devices expects to sell in 2012; and as sales climb into the high single-digit millions, Amazon’s tablet could become the top-selling Android tablet in the segment’s short history. The analyst also believes Amazon’s 10-inch offering will become a reality next year, and Amazon will sell 1.5 million units on top of sales of its 7-inch slate. BGR exclusively reported back in May that Amazon is working on a second higher-end quad-core tablet codenamed “Hollywood.”

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  • http://claimid.com/155/ 155

    I’m skeptical.  I used to really believe the Amazon Kindle Tablet would be my first Android tablet purchase.  Once they leaked the weak specs (Android 2.2, no eink display, etc), I immediately lost interest.

    The low price coincides with what might be an inferior product.

    • GeoKaplan

      That’s the point: It isn’t going to be an “Android tablet”. It is going to be an Amazon tablet, which will be built upon a core of Froyo. For the small amount of money rumored to be the selling price, Amazon will have a vested interest in keeping your eyes on the shiny objects they sell, not in providing you a general-use tablet to browse the world with (though, certainly, it figures to be able to do just that). I think it is reasonable to expect it to be locked down pretty securely to discourage rooting and repurposing.

      Face it, if the majority of those tablets sold wind up being rooted and used as anonymous 7″ tabs, then Amazon will lose a bundle. For a rumored $250 price, they don’t make money unless you are slavishly repaying them through linked, dedicated sales channels for your software, music, movies and goods. If a significant portion wind up being de-linked from Amazon, then I doubt the world will ever see the 10″ model.

      • http://claimid.com/155/ 155

        Look, I’m just saying it doesn’t interest me, but it did originally.  Your business analysis is probably correct.  However, it still means they should slash their sales forecast.  It still means I don’t want to own one.  If I feel that way I suspect there are a lot of people who feel this way as well.

        I actually own a Kindle and love it and recommend it to everyone.  It’s awesome.  I’m not interested in owning an underpowered tablet that doesn’t work as well as my Kindle for reading books and doesn’t work as well as my phone for multimedia.

      • Anonymous

        I hear you regarding the Kindle. We have a Kindle and an iPad2, and it simply would never occur to me to read a book on the iPad when we have the Kindle handy.

    • Anonymous

      My thoughts exactly – I’m a huge Kindle fan and thought for sure I’d be giving up both my iPad and my K2 when this device launched, but right now it looks like I’m going to stay in the Apple tablet camp for the forseeable future. Without an e-ink screen it’s just another Android tablet, and not a very good one at that.

  • Steel

    One thing is for sure: they’ll sell more this year if they’ll hurry and get the darned thing on the market.

    • Anonymous

      I’m thinking they could offer it on Black Friday for $150 or $199. It would be an amazing rush into the market and with the extra potential revenue from their other services built right into the tablet, they would still end up in the black. 

  • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

    Analyst, blah, blah, blah. This projection is nothing but a wild guess, and the analyst is nothing but a conman selling snake oil. BGR buys it by the pallet.

    • Anonymous

      A wild guess would be if they had no research, no surveys, no idea about why people are buying tablets. Since they have all of those things, it is an estimate. Nobody said it came out of a crystal ball or there ismsome kind of guarantee.

  • http://twitter.com/TheTechChat TheTechChat

    I’m pretty sure that the Asus Transformer has sold close to (or greater than) 2 million units, or will by the end of 2011. I don’t get why analysts seem to forget that Asus has done pretty darn well with the Transformer (when it’s not measured against the irrational exuberance exhibited by the iPad phenomenon).

    • http://www.droiddoes.com/ Norm

      Its done well for a 2nd tier product. But overshadowed by the iPad.

    • Anonymous

      The best selling Android tablet is the Barnes and Noble Nook Color.

      • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

        The Nook Color is not a tablet, it is an eReader.

    • Anonymous

      I agree, it’s as if they are told not to talk about the success of Asus Eee Pad Transformer.

    • Anonymous

      Most analysts don’t consider Transformsr and iPad to be in the same market.

  • Anonymous

    I am a big Apple fan, but with all of Amazon’s services and the lower price point this Kindle tablet could really have an impact on the iPad’s dominate market share. 

  • Anonymous

    As a current iPad 2 user and former Galaxy Tab user, I’m interested in seeing what Amazon does with their 7″ offering. My Galaxy Tab was plagued by repeated crashes and periods of unresponsiveness. I sold it within a few months and bought the iPad 2. The iPad 2 is excellent but I prefer the more portable footprint of the Galaxy Tab and impending Amazon offering. We will see.

  • Anonymous

    YAHTZEEEEEEE! first!

  • Anonymous

    BAAAAHAHAHHAAHA. number one android tablet is an e-reader. Toooooo funny. Android will be dead in two years  true story™©®

    • http://twitter.com/GRZLA Grizzly Atoms

      An eReader isn’t a tablet. The Nook Color is hands down the best selling eReader running android, but isn’t even a tablet. I don’t even know why I am replying. Just feeding trolls with nom-noms.

  • http://twitter.com/drypulse bryan parker

    ios/android tablets are gonna need to be pretty cheap, and not run like ass at that low price, for me to even consider wanting one with all the pc functionality i’d lose

  • Anonymous

    something tells me tech pundits and bloggers are in for a huge disappointment.   The 7ich Kindle Tablet is really just going to be Amazon’s version of the nook color. 

  • Justin Lisenby

    This tablet will rule the Android space. But the Android tablet space will only be a tiny bit of all the tablet space. iPad is the one and only tablet!

  • http://twitter.com/ocdtrekkie Jake Weisz

    Stop. Feeding. The. Analysts.

  • Anonymous

    Why on earth do you lend any credence whatsoever to analysts’ estimates? They are worthless. Want to be an analyst? Write well. Express yourself well. You don’t have to have a clue about anything. Just collect a pay check. Nice gig.

  • Anonymous

    This promises to be a huge seller, once again proving it’s all about price point, unless of course your a crApple head, in which case I believe it’s ‘a fool and his money’ kind of thing.  It’s about perceived value.  If you think it’s important to have a piece of fruit on your hardware, knock yourself out.

    • Anonymous

      Or maybe you just wanted something that works, has incredible battery life and 100,000+ apps?

      • Ginkster

        Android has over 200,000 apps

      • Anonymous

        Yes, Android *phones* have over 200,000 apps. Apparently, you haven’t had the misfortune to try many of the phone apps on an Android tablet, and see how they work intermittently, or not at all.

        What the Android tablet lacks is a significant number of apps specifically for the Android tablets. Until this happens, Android tabs will have a distant second place in this metric.

      • Anonymous

        Or just something that exists!

    • GeoKaplan

      On behalf of Android users everywhere who are tired of being stereotyped as mindless idiots like you, knock it off.

      What you apparently don’t realize is that you built the case for the iPad in your answer: It’s about perceived value. Before we bought the iPad, I bought a Xoom, figuring that, since I own a Gingerbread Android phone (and have owned Android phones since Cupcake), the learning curve would be easy.

      What I bought for my $500 was a balky, unfinished piece of hardware which had a seriously ugly interface, one which changed several of the operational idioms of the phone software.

      After being frustrated with it for a month, I returned it and ultimately bought an iPad2. Same price, but a world apart in user experience. And, hey, look at this…it carried over most of the interface idioms of my iPod touch, making it even easier to get started on using the device.

      So, no, it wasn’t important for me to “have a piece of fruit on my hardware”, but it was important for me to own a device which worked as it was supposed to, to provide excellent battery life and a good user interface. I miss the tabbed browser of Honeycomb, but that is a simple feature to add through OS updates. What I have instead is a rock-solid device for the family to use. Either way, it is $500 being spent, and the Xoom was an embarrassment.

      You don’t have to like the iPad, but deriding those who do use one as simpletons who follow trends just makes you look like a complete tool.When there are over a dozen high-profile Android tablets on the market and they can’t collectively total 10% of the tablet sales, then there is something more at work than simple blind devotional support. The fact is that the iPad is a superior device, when all factors are accounted for.

  • https://plus.google.com/117702410245683101961/posts Lucian Armasu

    Not really surprising. Initially we heard it would launch in August and sell 4-5 million of them by end of the year. Now it’s launching in November. Obviously the sales projections had to be revised.

  • http://twitter.com/ivmodo ivmodo

    If you have been using an iPhone 4, don’t get an underpowered tablet or be prepared for the disappointment.  I recently returned a $99 TouchPad because it was just way too slow in loading web pages (and they weren’t loaded nicely – twitter page wasn’t loading more tweets for example; the log level hack didn’t provide any visible improvement).  Not to say you must get an iPad if you want a tablet, but do consider getting a device with better performance, so that you don’t feel like your phone is faster than your pad.

    • Anonymous

      Eh for $99 it’s tolerable until quad-core tablets land anyhow :)

    • Alex

      Liar.
      99$ Touchpad is not returnable

  • Anonymous

    Hmmm, I find that very hard to believe dude. Seriously, I just dont see it.
    privacy-web.it.tc

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