Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by earl | Hacker News Reader

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Amazon AppStore is, I believe, the biggest android tablet app store. And growing. If you believe numbers that come from Gruber (and his math seems reasonable), as of July there were roughly 1.2MM android tablets [1]. Kindle Fire has sold, or will this quarter, 6MM units [2]. Thus Marco's hypothesis seems reasonable:

(1) if you want to make money on android tablets, you have to go where the tablets are. That is Amazon's appstore. They are, by volume, already 3-4 times the rest of the android tablet market. And this gap will probably continue to row. I would be surprised if, by this time next year, they do not have 10-15 times the marketshare of any other android tablet. Remember every other android tablet manufacturer has to make money on the tablet. Amazon probably loses money in order to make it back when you buy books, movies, magazines, music, etc, from them. Thus their tablet will almost certainly be cheaper, and hence more common, than any other android tablet.

(2) this will bootstrap their presence on android phones, especially once they release their rumored android phone. Which will be shitty but really really cheap (my prediction).

[1] http://mobilechannels.eu/index.php?option=com_content&vi...

[2] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-57327907-64/amazon-kindle-...

Couple thoughts:

AppsLib.com claims to be on 2M tablets [1]. Amazon will be on nearly 3x that soon, so you say, but guess what: That's not NEARLY enough.

My game was the #2 app overall on AppsLib for over two weeks. I got so many downloads that I could...just about buy a sandwich from the ad revenues. As long as it wasn't a premium sandwich.

More than 6M Android phones ship every 11 days. Probably every 10 days or less at this point -- the 550k/day number I used to calculate that is a few months old. A year ago I heard from one developer that their top game was pulling in $5000/day in ad revenues. Back then the iPhone had much larger numbers than Android.

Maybe paid apps will be better, but as the article points out, Amazon has a REALLY bad deal for app providers who are charging for apps. They can cut your price in half without asking, and you get half the normal commission! They can even give it away for free, and only pay you 20% of list price! Oh, and if you ever have a one-day sale on another site for the same app, then they can just cut your list price (and commission) permanently!

No, I don't think 6M tablets are going to overthrow Google's Market. In fact, I think that when people discover that the Kindle Fire doesn't have GPS, a camera, the free 3G of the older Kindles, or any of the Google apps that make Android shine, that there will be a consumer backlash. The Kindle Fire is a fancy eReader that can use SOME Android apps, and that's it. It may be enough for a lot of people, but it won't be long for other Android tablets to come out at the same price point. Like Lenovo [2].

[1] http://appslib.com/developers/index.html

[2] http://www.pcworld.com/article/239328/lenovo_heats_up_price_...

Even if you ignore all of the issues with Gruber's math (non-Honeycomb tablets matter a great deal, for instance, especially when you're trying to understand the impact of the Kindle Fire), as of July is a very, very out-of-date number. As of the beginning if November, ASUS alone has sold 1.2 million Transformers [1]. A better number is 6 million Android tablets (from Andy Rubin at AsiaD) [2], though that still leaves out important slices of the Android tablet market like the B&N Nooks.

Putting this together, if Amazon hits their (rumored) goal of selling over 5 million Kindle Fires, they'll certainly get a substantial slice of the Android tablet market and quite possibly a majority among US users (depending on what you count, like Nooks). Nevertheless, there will still be a larger slice of Android tablets with Google services and the Android Market, and the Android Market will be dominant outside the US (e.g. if you believe the NPD numbers ASUS might well have sold over 90% of their tablets outside the US [3]).

[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/asus_eyes_18_million_t...

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2011/10/19/2500959/6-million-android...

[3] http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/11/22/npd.shows.hp.l...

I'm not able to tell if the [1] link there is "shipped" or actually "sold to consumers" — they seem to talk about selling 1.2M but shipping the 1.8M by the end of the year. Since I doubt all of those are being sold right away, I'm not sure how that adds up. Same for [2] — does Rubin's "out there" mean shipped or sold to customers?

I thought ASUS was being clear in [1]. They've sold 1.2 million so far and plan to ship at least another 600k by the end of the year. At this point, they can't count those 600k as sold since that would be predicting the future.

As for [2], I'd expect Andy Rubin's number is based on the number of tablets accessing Google services [4] (which isn't surprising since that is the number Google can most easily observe). Given that, it seems clear to me those 6 million count as sold.

[4] http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/19/googles-andy-rubin-six-mi...

Thanks. I found estimates of 3.4MM android tablets as of mid October [1]. Pretty dismal figures or Google would be trumpeting them. Still, I think most of my point holds -- if Amazon sells 5MM kindles they won't just have a good slice, they'll have over half the market. And if your outside the US figures are correct, Amazon will hold an even bigger slice of people who can afford and will purchase android tablet apps.

[1] http://www.slashgear.com/googles-honeycomb-offensive-musters...

You seem to be presuming that people outside the US can't afford or won't purchase Android apps.

Given that outside the US includes Europe, Australia/New Zealand and the more affluent parts of Asia (Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.) and those are the places I'd expect official Android tablets to be selling, that assumption seems strange to me.

Also, don't be so quick to conclude Amazon will have over half even the US market. You're forgetting to count the Nooks (which have to be counted if you're counting Kindle Fires, of course). The best number I've found is about 3 million from March 2011 [1], with B&N claiming an unspecified "millions" at the Nook Tablet launch.

That means, to win in the US at the end of the year (since they're not competing internationally), Amazon has to beat:

* ~3 million Nook colors sold as of March 2011 +

* Nook Colors sold between March 2011 and the end of the year +

* ~1 million Android tablets sold through October 2011 (NPD numbers excluding TouchPad) +

* Android tablets sold in November and December

Theoretically, 5 million might be enough for Amazon, but you'd have to think:

* that Nook Color sales collapsed soon after March

* the Nook Tablet will flop

* Android tablet vendors can't even replicate their sales-to-date during the holiday season (even though there are new quad-core models and cheaper 7-inch models, among other things)

Personally, I think the more interesting race is Kindle vs Nook one-on-one. Nook, of course, has the early lead, but Kindle is selling faster. I think everyone expects Kindle to win eventually (absent a game-changing move by B&N), but will it be this year?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nook_Color

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