Around the Net
Kindle Fire Ships Almost 4M Tablets
- DigiTimes, Friday, December 2, 2011 12:14 PM
Quanta, the company that makes Amazon’s Kindle Fire, has so far shipped between 3 million and 4 million of the tablets, according to Chinese-language publication DigiTimes. What’s more, the paper’s sources say that Amazon continues to “increase its orders for [the] Kindle Fire and aims to see total OEM Kindle Fire shipments reach five million units by the end of December or early January.”
Also of note, Wintek, a top supplier of touch panels for the Kindle Fire, recently raised its internal forecast of shipments to Amazon, while industry sources suggest to DigiTimes Wintek will ship about 3 million to 3.5 million touch panels for Kindle Fire before January. That said, DigiTimes notes, “Some makers in the supply chain have built up inventory of needed parts and components steadily, and OEM Quanta has also kept its shipments regular, for the sake of avoiding over stockpiling inventory in case there is a reverse in order visibility, the sources pointed out.”
Despite middling reviews, some analysts predict that the Kindle Fire will quickly take marketshare from iPad-maker Apple. Citi analyst Mark Mahaney, for one, recently estimates that Amazon will sell 12 million Fires in 2012, thus wresting a 15% share of the tablet market from Apple.
