Apple IPad Increases Tablet Share as Amazon Shipments Slump | Hacker News Reader

Apple IPad Increases Tablet Share as Amazon Shipments Slump

businessweek.com

11 pointsrmah8 comments

A strange thing just popped into my mind: about 8 months ago when MG Siegler first posted [1] about Amazon having a Kindle tablet in production, he said they were going for a cheap, low-spec'd, 7 inch tablet for Q4 2011 (just to get their hands wet and evaluate the market) and the real Kindle tablet (a 10" beast with cameras, retina display and powerful CPU/GPU) would arrive Q1 2012 to compete directly with iPad. It's May already and there's not even a single rumor of such a tablet (at least nothing that I've heard of), and it seems like everyone's forgotten about it.

Now, I have an iPad (2) and wouldn't use a 10" Kindle Fire even if you gave it to me free of charge, but I was really looking forward to a decent, reasonably priced alternative to the iPad. It's a shame that apparently there would be no such product...

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/02/amazon-kindle-tablet/

Isn't this mainly because the new iPad came out in the first quarter, whereas most other electronics are bought for the holidays?

In Q4 2011, there were 28.2 million tablets sold vs 17.4 mil in Q1 2012. So a sequential decline of 38%.

While holiday sales are obviously significant, what this might indicate is that more people will purchase for themselves but are more willing to purchase alternatives (like the cheaper Kindle Fire) as gifts for others.

Totally anecdotally, among all the tablet owners I know Fires have been gifts and other tablets have been self-purchases. I also know some folks for whom the gift of a Kindle Fire ended up being the icebreaker that convinced them to spring for an iPad.

Assuming those are indicative of real trends, that's got to be very disconcerting for Amazon. I doubt that dedicated e-readers are going to drive ebooks for a whole lot longer. If they can't bring out a strong contender in the tablet space, they stand to lose their command of the market.

Or it means people were waiting for the iPad 3 in order to buy an iPad...

It could be the beginning of the end for Amazon's chance to succeed. By alienating the retail channel, which is very important for consumer devices, Amazon may find themselves struggling to find places to sell their device other than their own store.

While Amazon has a large customer base, it can't compete for market share with the big-box retailers and boutique stores that companies like Samsung and Apple have a significant presence in.

In another possibly-maybe-not unrelated datapoint, Target is going to stop carrying the Kindle. Wonder why...

http://gizmodo.com/5906934/why-is-target-kicking-amazon-kind...

I bet they will still carry the accessories though...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com