Kindle Fire sales stronger than analysts expected

Computerworld - Amazon will announce fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday on the heels of what analysts called stronger-than-expected fourth quarter Kindle Fire tablet sales.

Amazon sold 6 million of the $199 Kindle Fire in the fourth quarter, a Stifel Nicolaus analyst said in a recent note after earlier predicting 5 million Kindle Fire sales for the period. Recently, a Barclays analyst upped his estimate for the quarter to 5.5 million units sold, a million more than the initial prediction for the period.

Amazon has not historically announced sales for a specific device, and is not likely to do so tomorrow. Apple last week said it had sold 15.4 million iPad tablets in the last quarter, more than double the number it sold for the same period in 2010. The iPad starts at $499.

Strategy Analytics last week said all kinds of Android tablets, including the Kindle Fire and a variety of Galaxy Tablets from Samsung, sold 10.5 million units in the fourth quarter, garnering almost 39.1% of the tablet market. That compares to Apple's share of nearly 58%.

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.

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