Amazon Says It Sells 1 Million Kindles Per Week (NewsFactor)

The Kindle Fire is so hot, it has driven sales of Amazon.com's reader and tablet devices to more than 1 million per week, the online super-retailer said Thursday.

A news release said customers have been buying "well over 1 million Kindle devices per week" for each of the past three weeks, and the new Kindle Fire, with added features and a customized version of Google's Android operating system, is the bestselling item on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago.

Hot for the Holidays

"People are buying Kindle Fire because it's a simple, fully integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love -- watch movies, read books and magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games and surf the Web," said Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon's Kindle division, in the news release. "Customers continue to report preferring their Kindle e-reader for long-form reading, and in fact we've seen many customers buy two Kindles -- both a Kindle Fire and a Kindle or Kindle Touch -- this holiday season."

How many of those devices will remain sold is another matter. Retail returns are up slightly from last year, with 9.9 cents of every dollar going back to customers, the Associated Press reported the same day as Amazon's statement.

The Kindle sells for $199, less than half the cost of the basic model of Apple's market-topping iPad tablet, and Amazon also sells the $79 Kindle reader, $99 Kindle Touch, and $149 Kindle Touch 3G.

"Considering its aggressive pricing, I expect the Kindle Fire to be this year's hot, go-to holiday gift." Said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That the economy is in a fragile state is playing a part in this, too. The Fire is one of the few items I can think of that combines consumer buzz and bargain pricing."

'Different Critters'

And the inevitable question when discussing tablets: Should Apple be worried? "Probably so," said King. "Not only is the Fire priced much lower than the iPad but it doesn't really suffer from direct comparisons -- they're two entirely different critters."

The distinction, says King, is that Amazon markets the Fire as an integrated media consumption device compared to Apple's pitch for the iPad as a laptop replacement. "By not attempting to be all things to all people, Amazon may succeed in making the Fire just the sort of ideal "companion" device that many people consider the best use case for tablets," he said.

Jeff Orr, a mobile devices expert at ABI Research, said Amazon's claim of 1 million Kindles per week is plausible -- for now.

"Volumes will likely slow after the end-of-year holidays -- first quarter sales are cyclically slow," said Orr. "Some financial analysts (Amazon investors) have estimated up to 5 million Kindle Fire shipments in 2011. Coupled with continued growth of e-readers at lower prices year-over-year, ABI expects a healthy 4 Q'11 and a robust 2011 in total."

Most of the Kindle volume is domestic, he said. "Very little non-U.S. sales (especially on Wi-Fi only devices). Amazon does have some Kindle book stores on other country portals, Amazon.co.uk, for example, but only a handful of countries where they have content distribution rights."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111215/bs_nf/81398

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