Amazon has not released specific sales numbers for the Kindle Fire, but general numbers from research firm Strategy Analytics show that global tablet shipments more than doubled in the final quarter of 2011, from 10.7 million units in 4Q 2010 to 26.8 million units in 4Q 2011. Apple sold 15.4 million iPads in that quarter, but Android increased its market share to 39% (up from 29% in the same quarter of 2010). This increase in market share is largely due to the Kindle Fire, according to market analytics firm Flurry.
Flurry has been busy analyzing data they get from over 20% of all consumer sessions on more than 90% of all Android devices each day. (They define a session as the launch and subsequent exit, or pause for more than 10 seconds, of an app.) They prepared a table showing the app sessions by tablet type, comparing November to January. The chart shows rounded numbers; the January results were Kindle Fire, 35.7% and Galaxy Tab, 35.6%... so the Kindle Fire beat out the Galaxy Tab in just a few months.
Flurry's VP of Marketing, Peter Farago, says in his blog post that Amazon's success lay in focusing on the content rather than the specifications of the device. “Amazon takes the focus away from the device and operating system, emphasizing content, a differentiated consumer experience and commerce,” Farago noted. “For its launch, it lined up key content such as Facebook and Angry Birds, as well as offering Amazon Prime, its own streaming TV and movie service.” One of the key factors for Amazon is that it's focused on commerce, and they make it easy to buy things on the Kindle. “Upon launching the Kindle Fire, consumers must either link to their Amazon account or enter credit card information. This makes the user base 100% payment enabled.” This stands in sharp contrast to the rest of the Android tablet and smartphone market, where payments are a mix of various options and nothing approaches 100% penetration.
The success of Amazon's approach is shown by the following data compiled by Flurry, where they showed that Amazon drove over 2.5 times more paid downloads than the Samsung Galaxy Tab. This is a key number for developers, who have noted how Android lags iOS in terms of revenue, despite Android's market share.
Strategy Analytics analyst Peter King, when queried about the percentage of Android tablets held by the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet together, said they comprised roughly 40% of that 39% market share number for Android. If you don't consider those two tablets, Android tablets grew about 100% for the year compared to 111% for the iPad. When you consider the Kindle Fire and the Nook, though, the Android growth is 240% for the year.
King noted that the range between $200 and the $499 iPad is the key to growth. “There’s that gap in the middle now,” King said, “which is the space where people really need to get their strategies right, get their pricing right, get their channels right, get their ecosystem right, and try and break into that midground.”
Apple may well address that portion of the market later this year when they release one or more new iPad models. This may be as simple a move as reducing the price of the current iPad 2 to $399 or even $299, thus moving right in on the Kindle Fire. Whatever the case, rapid tablet growth seems assured for this year, and the increasing power of the devices will make them more and more important for gaming.
