Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet hasn’t even been available for a full month yet, but analysts and the media already seem comfortable declaring it the Android tablet to beat. Fourth-quarter sales estimates have been as high as 5 million units and even more conservative estimates reach well into the millions. In a note to investors on Monday, Evercore Partners analyst Robert Cihra said he believes Amazon’s line of Kindle Fire tablets will make up 50% of all Android slates sold in 2012, leaving Apple’s iPad as the only tablet essentially unaffected by Amazon’s blockbuster device. Read on for more.
“While Amazon’s Kindle Fire has come out of the gates strong, as expected, we see Apple maintaining its competitive lead, if anything accentuated by what now looks like the only tablet to so far mount any credible iPad challenge apparently needing to do so by selling at cost; not to mention Amazon’s success may just vaporize other ‘for profit’ Android tablet OEM roadmaps (e.g., we est Amazon 50% of all Android tablets in CY12),” Cihra wrote according to Forbes’ Apple 2.0 blog. “Meanwhile Apple goes on as the only vendor able to cream off the most profitable segment of each market it targets, whether tablet, smartphone or PC.”
While the analyst believes Amazon’s tablets will have a minimal impact on the iPad, he did adjust his first-quarter 2012 revenue estimate for Apple down to $39.1 billion from $39.4 billion, and he now thinks the company will sell 14 million iPads — 1 million fewer than he had predicted earlier.
BGR reviewed the Amazon Kindle Fire last month and we thought that it was a clear winner despite being a little rough around the edges.
