Confirming what we’ve seen from a number of data sources in the past several weeks, Flurry Analytics shows how Kindle Fire has become the leading Android tablet in the space of about a month or so. Samsung has vowed to fight back with new devices, but Kindle’s Success is about low pricing, content and the strength of the Amazon brand.
Samsung is outmatched when it comes to content and brand strength (at least with US consumers). It also probably can’t match Amazon’s loss-leader pricing.
Flurry had this to say about the chart below:
On the left, in November, we see that Samsung Galaxy Tab dominated application session usage on Android, with the Kindle Fire only having recently launched. At that time, the Samsung Galaxy Time was widely considered the only viable competition to the iPad, though a distant second. In January, after the holiday boom in devices and in apps, we see that strong adoption of Kindle Fire, combined with significant downloads driven from the Amazon App Store, resulted in a massive surge in session usage that just edges out the Galaxy Tab.
In some ways the Kindle Fire is less an Android tablet than it is an enhanced Kindle eReading device.
Sales estimates of the Kindle Fire, for Q4, now range from under 4 million to 6 million.