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Android Handhelds Technology Hardware

So Far, More Than 50,000 Kindle Fire Pre-Orders Per Day 291

An anonymous reader writes "Leaked screens from Amazon's internal stock monitoring and assignment system (Alaska) has revealed just how popular the Kindle Fire tablet is already. In just 5 days of being up for pre-order there have been 250,000 reserved. That's more than 50,000 per day or 2,000 sold every hour. If that continues to launch day Amazon will need to have 2.5 million ready to ship to meet demand. To put that in context, the original iPad managed to ship 1 million in its first month." The key phrase seems to be "if this level of consumer demand continues" — but given the success of the e-ink Kindle line, that might not be crazy. Do you want one, or not?
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So Far, More Than 50,000 Kindle Fire Pre-Orders Per Day

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  • I want one. Now. So count me in and take my $99. A hell with it, make it 4! One for me, my wife, two kids... damn. Make it 6. Labrador and chinchilla will have one too.
    • Make that $199 for the Fire.

      $79 if you want the lowest end no-keyboard version (which is my favourite considering I already have a Xoom for my tablet needs).

    • I want one also. I've been drooling over the iPad for quite awhile, but couldn't justify the $499 starting price point. At $199, though, I can buy one for me and one for my wife and still save money versus buying a single iPad. No, it doesn't have all of the features that the iPad has, but that's why it is being offered for less money.

      Of course, from what I've heard, there will be a Kindle Fire 2 released in early 2012 which will be better than this initial offering. I might just start saving now and se

  • by tripleevenfall ( 1990004 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @09:26AM (#37598756)

    This is the first competitor to the iPad at the working-class level. It's priced affordably and contains most of the features people will actually use.

    Is it as full-featured as the iPad, of course not, but you don't need $500-600 to get into one. This device could bring apps, cloud storage, streaming media, and these kinds of things down to a crowd that couldn't afford the pay the Apple premium before.

    Some will gripe about there not being cameras or a huge amount of onboard storage, but for the average consumer, this will give them 80% of the iPad at 40% of the price

    • by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      The Apple product doesn't have a huge amount of onboard storage either.

      • iPad 2 on-board storage starts at twice the Fire on-board storage and goes up to 8 times.
        • This is a legitimate gripe in a way, but really, 60GB isn't enough to store all of my audio, either.

          If I have to section off 8GB or 60GB of my music collection and maintain that, it's about the same amount of trouble either way - maybe even more trouble to maintain the larger list.

          • by dzfoo ( 772245 )

            Or, you could create an automatic playlist of all your music and set-up the iPad to just fill all available space with music sourced from that playlist.

            No lists to maintain.
                      -dZ.

    • by Doctor Memory ( 6336 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @09:34AM (#37598872)

      Heh, I think half the average consumers for this type of device would be satisfied with a tablet with two functions: a web browser, and Angry Birds. Bonus for a basic MP3 player. Bring that in for around US$125 and you've got a killer product.

      • How about $149.00 [buy.com]

        Of course to get full functionality you'll need to root [theunlockr.com]

        and a quick install of your particular flavor ROM [theunlockr.com]
    • * Gig may be enough for Ebooks, but its not enough for mp3's. Especially as there is no slot for a (SD or MicroSD) memory card.

      Amazon may say you store your media on their cloud, but its only got WiFi and you might not always be within a EiFi area that you have free access to.

      • This is an internet appliance, basically. It's predicated on internet access. Just as laptops and desktops aren't that much good without internet access, neither will this be.

      • My 4GB Ipod Nano does just fine for music. You don't need to take 100 GB of music with you. Sure it's nice to be able to, but hardly necessary. It used to be nice to have a CD walkman, and maybe bring a long a couple extra CDs. With this you can easily bring along 20 albums without carrying anything extra.
    • I pre-ordered mine on the 2nd day, to make sure I was in line to NOT get delayed shipping (I can always cancel before Nov 15 if I change my mind, after all). I ordered specifically because it WASN'T the iPad. I didn't want the camera and all the extra features, or the price. I imagine I'm like a lot of people:

      I want something to read books on, but want something more than a regular Kindle. (ie: color) I want to be able to do some basic web browsing, read news, check web mail, etc and do basic work tasks

  • 50,000 pre-orders per day is very good, but comparing it to the iPad is just asking for trouble. Wait until we get closer to the actual release date. I highly doubt that daily iPad pre-orders were linear in the weeks leading up to the official release, just as I doubt daily Fire orders will be linear. There are six weeks to go. A lot can happen in six weeks!

  • by Sasayaki ( 1096761 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @09:39AM (#37598938)

    http://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]

    "By your third trimester, there will be hundreds of babies inside of you."

  • I was thinking about getting my wife an iPad 2 for Christmas, but unless Apple has a fire sale on them to make way for an iPad 3, I think I'll get her an Amazon Fire instead. It costs a lot less, and will probably allow her to do most of the things she would want to do with the iPad 2. She already has an iPod Touch (current gen.), so she doesn't need a camera, etc. Hopefully though, this will force Apple to drop their price.
    • If she really uses a iPod Touch she won't be happy with the Fire... "what do you mean I can't load all my iTunes and iApps?". If nothing else Apple has a lock on the ability to seamlessly move your stuff from one iDevice to the next that Android just doesn't do very well (yet?).
      • I dunno, I'm with the OP on this one. Both the Fire and the iPod are small enough to carry together (especially when you carry a purse or bag all the time anyway), and not everyone wants to have every possible function integrated into one device. I have an iPhone, but I still carry my iPod because I don't want to run the battery in my phone dead listening to music. That, and I hate not being able to listen to something I want simply because my phone doesn't have enough space to hold the bulk of my music

        • I'm not interested in pushing the iPad on you, but I do want to mention that a 3.5" device and a 10" device have different uses. If you were to have an iPad and an iPod, they would serve different purposes, and you wouldn't WANT to carry them together. The iPod goes in the pocket, the iPad sits next to the couch or the bed. But if you got her a 7" device and it isn't quite big enough to make that difference, then you're likely to end up with something becoming a door stop.

          If she has an iPod, get her an i

          • by TyFoN ( 12980 )

            I bought a galaxy tab for my self, and after a week I was battling my wife over it so I had to buy one for her as well and she loves it. I don't think the fire would be approved :)

      • If she really uses a iPod Touch she won't be happy with the Fire... "what do you mean I can't load all my iTunes and iApps?".

        She uses the iPod Touch as a music player & for shooting videos of her dog. The fire would be used mostly for reading eBooks & browsing the web, which she does not use the iPod Touch for very often, so no big worries there. Besides, if she buys Kindle books she can always get them on the iPod Touch as well using the Kindle app.

        • by dzfoo ( 772245 )

          "Happy Christmas, honey-- Here you go!

          I know it's not an iPad, but it's cheaper. Just as good, right?

          Just thinking of you...

          what??

    • I ordered a Fire for my wife, all she really wants is an e-book reader with a web browser for e-mail, although I'm sure she'll find plenty of other uses for it once she gets it.

  • Ant or not? If is is locked down 100% and I only can run Amazon approved apps (like Silk), no thanks. If it is open to a reasonable degree and I can install the apps I want: yes.
    But being from a Non-US country, I don't even have the choice.
    I know better than to blame Amazon (entirely) - their whole concept is based on media, and they do not have license agreements in place globally. As they are selling at cost (or even a few $ loss) pr. device, I can understand they don't wan't be to buy until they can ge
  • I think Amazon is being very clever with the Kindle Fire. It is a new device with tons of content readily available (more than iTunes, I believe), it is cheap and, most importantly, it is not a direct competitor to the iPad.

    People who want (or don't mind) a 7" device will get the Kindle Fire. People who need a larger screen will go for the other tablets (mostly the iPad, these days).

    I think the Kindle Fire will sell pretty well. And Apple will have someone else other than Samsung to get worried about.

  • by jps25 ( 1286898 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @09:48AM (#37599062)

    I'm curious about the Kindle but some reviews I've read on amazon claim that its display size and its weak zoom function make it useless for typical university books (mathematics, computer science).
    I have no first-hand experience, so could someone here enlighten me whether it's a viable alternative to paper?

    • by artor3 ( 1344997 )
      If you mean a regular Kindle, it's no good for text books. I love my Kindle, but e-ink just isn't good for that application. The Kindle Fire being described in the article, however, is a tablet computer with an LCD screen, and would probably work just fine in that role.
  • No. For two reasons. Like somersault above, I already have a tablet for tablet-y things. I've tried reading with the Kindle app, and while the presentation is good, the glow from the screen strains my eyes. Also, battery life sucks for this purpose.

    The second and more important reason is I wanted an e-ink display for a reader. A touch screen isn't very useful, either.

    So what I ordered was the previous generation Kindle Keyboard as they call it now, with no ads. Small, great battery life, /and/ they had a re

    • I've tried reading with the Kindle app, and while the presentation is good, the glow from the screen strains my eyes. Also, battery life sucks for this purpose.

      While I agree with you, especially if you read for more than an hour a day, you might get better results switching to black background with white lettering. After a day at work staring at a PC screen, the last thing I want to do is try and read for leisure off of one (which is why I have an eInk reader) but I can do so comfortably for limited amounts of time by swapping the pallet. I know the Android Kindle app allows for swapping, and I'm pretty sure the Touchpad app does as well but that's all I have fa

  • by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @10:00AM (#37599210)

    Apple essentially reinvented the market for tablet devices with the iPad. Which is a premium product being sold by a company with a reputation for premium products at a premium price.

    Virtually every other major manufacturer looked at it, thought "Hey, we can do something similar" and started selling their product for about the same price - give or take maybe 5-10%. The likes of HP discovered the hard way that they do not have a premium reputation. But the Touchpad sale proved that actually there's huge demand there if the product can be sold not 5-10% cheaper than the iPad, but 50-80%.

    Given the development time these things take and the sort of notice you have to give to a big factory to get thousands of anything, Amazon have probably been thinking this for some time.

    • But the Touchpad sale proved that actually there's huge demand there if the product can be sold not 5-10% cheaper than the iPad, but 50-80%.

      Lots of uneconomical products sell if priced at less than 1/3rd the manufacturing cost. There'd be a Model S on every block by now if they sold for $12k. I'd have a 6 monitor setup on my desk at home if I could find one for $300. Not that I don't like my $99 Touchpad, but there's no way I would have dropped $350 for the device.

      • by jimicus ( 737525 )

        This is exactly my point.

        I have a sneaking suspicion that all the manufacturers set up to build a product that would retail at $4-500 and could not possibly break even at less than $350. Which means not only did they have a product that was being pitched too pricey, there was no way of reducing the price without making a whacking great loss.

        Amazon, OTOH, have obviously considered that from the off. They'll do fine.

    • An interesting viewpoint.

      While Apple can certainly be commended for redefining tablet computing,
      Id also like to add in another thought for consideration.

      Bearing in mind that Microsoft are yet to bring to market a viable tablet / phone OS to compete with iOS would we have seen the explosion of iPad
      (android) alternatives if it was not for the proliferation of Android?

      In short - do we owe some degree of thanks to the (i use the term loosely) openness of Android/Google that so many other manufacturers have been

    • But Amazon already has a reputation for the eReader market, too. I don't think Amazon is simply copying Apple here.
  • I placed my pre-order on day 1, however if there isn't a way to browse the internet WITHOUT Silk, I won't use it much at all.

    Given the fact that it is an Android device, I have faith that it will be hacked fairly quickly, and you will be able to do almost anything with it anyways!

  • ...when you guys have shoehorned Android onto it!

  • I don't own a tablet yet. I refuse to give Apple any money, and other tablets didn't impress me.
    I like that this thing is only 7" and will fit into an inside suit jacket pocket.
    I was seriously looking at the BB Playbook, but the software just isn't there yet.
    This was a no brainer for me.
    The Kindle Fire will make a nice media consumption device.

    I already have a 3G kindle for reading books.

It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. - W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876

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