ComScore: Amazon Kindle Fire is 54.4% of US Android tablets | Hacker News Reader

ComScore: Amazon Kindle Fire is 54.4% of US Android tablets

electronista.com

16 pointsevo_921 comments

It must aggrevate Google to know that they have very little control at all over the the majority of Android tablets out there.

It must also excite Samsung to know that it's possible to be successful using Google's software while simultaneously cutting Google near completely out of the picture. (Lots of Samsung might try to get out from under Google's thumb rumors + this = hopefully we'll see something big from Samsung!)

It must aggrevate Google to know that they have very little control at all over the the majority of Android tablets out there.

Why would that aggravate them? Amazon did exactly what Google explicitly stated could and would be done with the Android code.

Lots of Samsung might try to get out from under Google's thumb rumors + this = hopefully we'll see something big from Samsung!

My Galaxy S II already has a Samsung store. It can access Samsung media. So...rumors? Sounds like some dreamy wishes of the anti-Android faction desperately hoping for a world where Android falls apart.

The Kindle Fire makes Android stronger. Alternative stores and alternative media services make Android stronger. How is that difficult to understand?

Because they have no control over its user interface, they don't control the app market, and they don't have control over whether or not the tablet uses Google services or not.

Like it or not, Google is a for-profit corporation. For them, Android only "works" if they can control it and profit off of it. If the majority of devices running Android are completely out of their control without a Google-branded experience, it's not a sustainable business endeavor for them.

If the majority of devices running Android are completely out of their control without a Google-branded experience

Google makes a lot of cash off of iOS. They make a lot of cash off of Windows machines. Neither of which allow them to control the experience or dictate that they use Google services.

Because it turns out that Google seems pretty confident about their services. That they want to compete on the merits of their services and features over locking you into specific features. They ship devices that allow me to flash a ROM that completely removes every hook to Google. They do this voluntarily. Adding armchair hypotheses about what Google needs to do, when it goes exactly contrary to everything they have done and continue to do seems rather remarkable.

Plus the fact that the majority of the Android experience has been out of the hands of Google from the beginning. The smartphone manufacturers and the carriers have more control over the install of Android on their devices than Google ever has. Google seems fine with that arrangement so far so I'm guessing it's working for them.

The fanboy is strong with you. Google is CLEARLY trying to create a Apple-style universe. Hence the music store. Hence the app store. Hence forcing every google user in existence into at least seeing these services, and being automatically signed up for them (I never signed up for Google Play, surprisingly it already works for me).

Google clearly is fighting the fragmentation of carriers, not happy about it! Where did you get this? Google has been trying to get their carriers to follow them, to follow guidelines, to decrease fragmentation, improve their update mechanisms. Heck, 4.0 was a subtle attempt to get a lot of the carriers to not built their shit on top (they of course, did), Google keeps threatening to shut off App Store access for versions of the software that don't meet their demands.

This is not the behavior of a company who is shooting for and attempting to increase fragmentation of their platform.

And, hilariously, you missed the biggest part: Google cares about advertising. They don't get to advertise on the Fire, in any form -- Amazon is the master of it. So no, you better bet that they're not thrilled about the two major points of their mobile platform being ignored (1: create a google universe that users live in 2: advertise to those users). Those are Google's clear and often-repeated goals. And the increasing fragmentation is ruining that, not helping it.

Samsung do devices, they have failed in every way possible to do services.

"...hopefully we'll see something big from Samsung!"

This was why the launch of the G SIII was delayed. Just a few more days to wait and you'll see.

I waited, and I saw half-baked software addons to Android, some of which weren't even operating at show time. I saw an ugly beast of a phone that clearly spent most of it's time in Legal instead of Design. So much for Samsung wowing us.

So how much of the total tablet market?

This sounds like comparing the difference between the marketshares of non-IE browsers back in the day of Microsoft's dominance... pointless to ignore the 600-lb gorilla.

This report gives 97.3% share in tablet market for iPads.

http://www.good.com/news/press-releases/120426.php

I read that as "enterprise" activations, not of the overall market.

My sense is that the Fire is unusable for the technorati, but actually well-liked by mainstream users who don't know any better. I think this demonstrates different sensitivities in the two populations, in particular the mainstream is (apparently) very sensitive to price and not at all sensitive to performance, battery life, or general purpose computing (all of which are abysmal in the Fire).

I think the success of the kindle fire is due to its small (book like) size which make it the perfect ebook reader. Combined with a low price and a deep integration with amazon prime... it's a killer.

I only use mine to read and honestly that's maybe the best $200 I ever spent.

I can't imagine doing lots of reading on a non-eink screen.

That was actually my big concern when I bought it. But it ended up fine with me.

I know some people having trouble reading too long on it though. And they went back to eink.

For reading in bed at night, the back-lit screen on an iPad or Fire is nice since you don't need another light source. But I agree for all other times.

I have a kindle, iphone 4, and ipad 1. I like reading on all of them, but I mostly read on my phone.

This is mainly because I read in bed at night, and having a light on for the kindle would bothers my wife trying to get to sleep.

I rarely read with the ipad just because of size and weight. And to a lesser extent the non-retina screen.

Some people are really bothered by reading a backlit screen, but it doesn't bother me. I use the black background with white text and turn down the brightness and it works pretty good.

I agree, I liked the price point of the Fire but didn't want it because the Amazon connection didn't work for me. I got a Galaxy Tab 2 for $50 more and I am absolutely happy with it.

To me, it seems like they must have omitted the iPad share on purpose to come up with this huge share number that actually doesn't matter.

I'm sure that they have the numbers - but if they included iPad, we'd probably see that the Fire's share one the overall tablet market share is some unexciting low number like 1%. Capturing a massive share of the Android tablet market isn't that important when Apple might be selling like 50 or 100 iPads for every Android tablet sold.

True, but just this morning I was asking people which Android devices should I get for testing on (for web development), and this really helps answer the question. The overall share may be small, but of that share, Kindle Fire is the most common — and, it seems, getting more common all the time.

So: still a useful article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com