Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet a Hot Seller This Black Friday
Tablet Continues to Generate Huge Sales
Still not sure what to get your friends and family for Christmas this year? Well, you might as well go out and buy what may be emerging as this year's hot holiday item: the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet computer. According to reports, it was a very popular device this past Black Friday.
Amazon released the Kindle Fire in early November at the low price of $199 -- considerably less than Apple's ubiquitous iPad tablet. However, there's been some question as to whether or not the Kindle Fire is really capable of competing with the iPad in the tablet market. Some critics have pointed to the device's slow web browsing performance, while others simple don't believe it boasts the features necessary to topple Apple. "The Kindle Fire...is best considered a relatively inexpensive, hassle-free but flawed way to consume books, music, and videos purchased at Amazon," said PCWorld's Melissa Perenson.
Still, it is a rather functional entry-level device in the tablet market and that price has made it extremely popular this holiday season. Amazon says that the Kindle Fire has been its hottest-selling item since its release earlier this month. Furthermore, it's not just Amazon reporting such impressive sales; not long ago, Target vice president of merchandising Nik Nayar reported that the device was his firm's best-selling tablet on Black Friday.
It's not just the Kindle Fire that's proving a hot Amazon item, either. The company also said it sold four times the Kindle e-readers this Black Friday than last, with sales of the standard Kindle ($79), Kindle Touch ($99), and Kindle Touch 3G ($149) up substantially.
Besides the Amazon web site, the Kindle (in all forms) is available at roughly 16,000 U.S. retailers.
The hot Kindle sales immediately paid off for Kindle on Wall Street, with company shares jumping up 3.5 per cent in value in premarket trading on Monday. At the time, share value sat at $189.50.
Overall, Black Friday was very successful for retailers, with sales estimated to be well over $11 billion -- an increase of approximately $1 billion since last year. That makes it the biggest Black Friday yet, and the biggest year-to-year gains since 2007.
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