Black Friday: iPad vs. Kindle Fire
Two tablets are currently fighting for leadership in the holiday season: Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad.
Amazon insists that the Kindle Fire is its best product. The 7-inch tablet became available for pre-orders on September 28, and the first devices were delivered to customers on November 14.
Also, the company, which is reluctant to share sales information, reported that compared to last year, 4 times more of its devices were sold on this Black Friday (the first day of big sales before Christmas in the USA)
Meanwhile, the iPad is also enjoying a major increase in sales this Black Friday.
“Apple’s official stores sold 68% more tablets per hour than last year. According to our estimates, 13.5million tablets will be sold this quarter,” said Piper Jeffrey. “Our estimates agree with comScore forecasts, which noted that the number of visitors to our online store has doubled compared to last year.”
In other words, none of the tablets, which many experts positioned as real competitors for the festive period, showed the corresponding results. Now the only question left is whether the Kindle Fire will be able to extend its finest hour and thus shake the iPad’s long-term dominance in the tablet market.
Previous forecasts suggested that the iPad would face active resistance. Earlier in November, the portal Retrevo.com I asked about the Kindle Fire opinion from about 1,000 online users. 44% of respondents said they would prefer an Amazon tablet to an Apple device. Another 44% said they don’t know enough about the Kindle Fire to make a decision. Only 12% of respondents said they would have chosen an iPad anyway.
Over the previous year, several “iPad killers” were released, but they all faced extremely low sales and negative reviews in the press.
On the eve of the Kindle Fire release, Apple representatives told Ben Reitz, an analyst at Barclays Capital, that the Amazon tablet would suffer the same fate. The main reason is the fragmentation problems that led to the collapse of Apple’s competitors. “The more fragmentation, the better, as it leads more users to a stable platform from Apple,” he said. “We believe that Apple will become more aggressive in pricing eventually, but not at the expense of quality.”
Of course, it’s too early to say whether the Kindle Fire will be able to compete with the iPad, but Amazon claims that all signs so far speak in its favor.
