Kindle Fire ships a day early
Amazon says it's 'thrilled' to ship the tablet ahead of schedule
Computerworld - Amazon shipped its $199 Kindle Fire a day early, the company said in a statement released late Monday, and some reviews have already started piling up.
"We're thrilled to be able to ship Kindle Fire to our customers earlier than we expected," said Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle. "Kindle Fire quickly became the bestselling item across all of Amazon.com, and based on customer response we're building millions more than we'd planned."
Some reports indicated that Amazon had ordered 5 million of the devices from component makers; various analysts have predicted that Amazon will sell 5 million by year's end. By contrast, Apple could sell 20 million iPads in the fourth quarter, after selling more than 11.1 million in the third quarter.
The iPad starts at $499 for a 9.7-in. device, while the 7-in. Kindle Fire at $199 has been more closely compared to the $249 Nook Tablet, also with a 7-in. screen. Analysts predict the Nook Tablet, which goes on sale by Friday, will sell up to 2 million units by year's end.
In a breathless, run-on sentence describing the early shipment, Amazon chose to focus first on how the new device offers "18 million movies, TV shows, songs, books magazines, apps and games, as well as free storage of Amazon digital content in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync for books and movies, a 14.6 ounce design that's easy to hold with one hand, a vibrant color touch screen, a powerful dual-core processor and Amazon Silk -- Amazon's new revolutionary Web browser that accelerates the power fo the mobile device by using the computing speed andpower of the Amazon Web Service cloud -- all for only $199."
Early reviews noted that the Fire lacks some of the features in the iPad, including a camera and microphone, but said that the brilliant screen and low price make up for the deficiencies.
More tablet info
The table below shows the most recently announced tablets as reported by Computerworld. Click a tablet's name in the leftmost column to read a news story or review with more information about the device, or view a larger table with more details about each product.
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at
@matthamblen or subscribe to
Matt's RSS feed. His e-mail address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.
Read more about Hardware in Computerworld's Hardware Topic Center.


- Excel 2010 Cheat Sheet
- Register for this Computerworld Insider Cheat Sheet and gain access to hundreds of premium content articles, guides, product reviews and more.
- Gary Watson, CTO, Nexsan: 6 Tips for Selecting Hard Drives
- What type of drives should be used for what types of data? Selecting a drive and interface can seem complex with considerations of...
- 10 Reasons to Modernize the Desktop
- Learn how to enhance your business through VMware View
- The Laptop Dilemma: How to Maximize Productivity and Lower the Burden on IT
- Download Now
- Practice Management: Double Billing Rate and Improve Patient Services
- Would you like to double your billing rate and achieve faster payment for services?
Download this customer success story to see how One Health... - Mission Critical Data Explosion and Customer Case Study
- Would you like to double your tier 1 storage capacity while simultaneously reducing your storage footprint?
Download this customer success story to see how...
All Hardware White Papers
- Distributed Database Security with Real-time Monitoring
- View this demo and learn how IBM InfoSphere Guardium database activity monitoring can help protect your sensitive data in distributed DBMS environments with...
- InfoSphere Warehouse Packs Demo
- These flash modules make warehousing more tangible and relevant to business users through detailed explanations of the InfoSphere Warehouse Packs.
- Delivery Management -- Extending Lifecycle Management
- Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 1:00 PM EDT
Siloed organizations continue doing the wrong things and doing things wrong, leading to increased costs,... - Leverage automation today to reduce IT complexity
- Date: Tuesday, June 5, 2012, 2:00 PM EDT
Whether your B2B complexity is caused by multiple technologies due to M&A, business or application specific... - Redefine Expectations in the Data Center
- Need to do more with less? Watch this video to learn how HP ProLiant Gen8 servers can help your business deploy servers three... All Hardware Webcasts