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1) Kindle Fire Powers Android Tablet Share
Strategy Analytics revealed that the Kindle Fire helped power market share for tablets based on Google's Android operating system to 39 percent market share for the fourth quarter of 2011, up from 29 percent a year ago.
2) Apple iPad Q4 Sales
Apple may have sold 15.4 million-plus iPads in for Q4, but Strategy Analytics said iPad market share fell to 58 percent from 68 percent from the fourth quarter a year ago. Thanks to the Kindle Fire, Android narrowed the gap.
3) A Flurry of Evidence
Mobile analytics firm Flurry supplied more evidence that the Kindle Fire is gaining momentum—thanks to its traffic share gains. As this chart from Flurry suggests, when the Fire launched in November, the Galaxy Tab comprised 63 percent of Android app sessions. Through January, the Galaxy Tab and Kindle Fire each accounted for 36 percent of app usage, showing the Fire paired with Amazon's Appstore has proved to be popular among consumers.
4) Kindle Fire Beats Tab in Paid Downloads
Flurry also looked at data from five popular paid apps and found that the Kindle Fire drove over 2.5 times more paid downloads to consumers than the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which has at least twice as many active units in the real world as the Fire.
5) Amazon Appstore
What does that lead us to conclude? "This shows that for tablets, the Amazon Appstore can already deliver more direct revenue to developers than the Android Market,"
Flurry wrote in a blog post. Wow.
6) Amazon and Apple
Flurry believes the revenue-driving capability of the Kindle Fire/Appstore combination has more in common with Apple's iPad/App Store dynamic duo. Both Amazon and Apple emphasize content and services via their respective devices rather than hardware.
7) Quality Content
It's not just applications. Amazon has wisely linked its other Amazon content services with the Fire, including access to its Kindle e-bookstore and Amazon Instant Video.
8) Content as Revenue Driver
This successful approach has led
RBC Capital analyst Ross Sandler to claim that Amazon may be making roughly $136 in content over the life of its device.
9) 6 Million Fires?
The content delivery has Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan
believing Amazon sold as many as 6 million Fires in Q4, up from Rohan's earlier modeling for 5 million units.
10) Netflix Beware
It could get better for Fire users:
Amazon is reportedly going to launch a streaming video subscription service to challenge Netflix. That would provide Amazon with another feather in its content cap and give rival Netflix fits.
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See All Slideshows
Amazon's Kindle Fire is an unabashed success, though how much of a success remains unknown thanks to the e-commerce company's refusal to disclose unit shipment sales for its Kindle line of e-readers and tablets. Amazon has only said it sold millions of Kindles and Kindle Fires during the holiday quarter. Furthermore the company's Q4 earnings were less than stellar, throwing more shadow than light on hardware sales. Still, most industry analysts have crunched their own numbers. But first, here's a level set: When word leaked that Amazon would launch an Android tablet, every high-tech pundit saw it as an affront to Apple and its world-dominating iPad. Speculation is about as iterative as software out of Google, so when further info leaked that the tablet would be priced between $200 and $300, people stopped calling it an iPad challenger and started predicting it would be the first hugely successful tablet to compete with existing offerings from Samsung, Motorola and HTC. Analysts now believe that's about right. Check out why in this eWEEK slide show.