Post Christmas Read Says the Amazon Fire Tablet is Gaining Traction

As was expected, the recently launched Amazon Kindle Fire tablet is taking the tablet market by storm. (see more on the Kindle Fire at Amazon's Kindle Fire Tablet). Evidently, holiday sales were strong for this new tablet which may be the only one to be abe to give Apple's iPad a run for its money. So many people that I spoke to got a Kindle Fire for Christmas, including my 10 year old son. After his first day back to school from the holiday, he came home saying the same thing. So many kids in his class also got the Kindle Fire for Christmas.

To be more specific, mobile ad network, Millennial Media reported that impressions coming from Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet surged 261% on Christmas Day. Looking at the same data between December 23 and December 26, the Kindle Fire saw an average daily growth rate of 113%. At this rate, there is no doubt this device is taking a bite out of Apple's iPad marketshare for tablet devices. In my mind, the $199 price point is one of the key reasons for the Fire's success.

That being said, rumors exist saying that Apple will announce an iPad3 soon so this battle for tablet marketshare is going to get hot and heavy well into 2012. (For more on the ipad3, see iPad3?? What Will it Look Like?

So the battle between the Android operating system and Apple's iOS continues. (see Android vs. Apple for more on that topic). Some additional big news in the press yesterday that will help bolster Fire sales is that USA today launched a new application specifically for the Fire. The app is available from the Amazon Appstore (USA Today) and has been optimized to run specifically on the Kindle Fire. Along with all the great national news provided by USA Today, they also provide a large collections of photos from each section, entitled "The Day in Pictures", which also covers "The Day in Sports" as well as "The Day in Celebrities". I look for more and more Android applications to be introduced which are optimized for the Fire.

To further demonstrate the dominance of both Android and iOS in the marketplace, ComScore, a global leader in measuring th digital world, stated that based on the November 2011 analysis, the combined Android and iOS operating systems accounted for 75% of the US smartphone market. No data existed specific for tablet OS'. As far as smartphones were concerned, ownership in the US topped 91 million based on the November data. Android devices made up 46.9 percent and iOS captured 28.7 percent.

Relating these numbers back to the Amazon Fire, it only means that more and more applications will be created that will make their way into the tablet market, making the Kindle Fire even more valuable to users.

We'll keep an eye ot for any announcements from Amazon on specfic numbers as they relate to Kindle Fire sales over the Christmas holiday, but Amazon is typically conservative when it comes to saying anything about specific numbers. Needless to say, all this data points to the obvious truth that the device has been a huge success!!

(some of the stats and data from this hub were sourced from Fierce Mobile Content website from January 3, 2012.)