The Kindle Fire was quite literally on FIRE, with one analyst raising his sales forecast from 4.5 million to 5.5 million.
Last month Amazon sent a out a vague press release that indicated that its Kindle Fire was selling very, very well. Anthony DiClemente is taking the company’s suggestion seriously.
The Barclays analyst has bumped up his sales estimates for the low-end tablet: He now thinks Jeff Bezos sold 5.5 million units last quarter, up from his earlier guess of 4.5 million.
DiClemente figures Amazon will now sell 18.4 million Kindle Fires this year, which would give it nearly half of the non-iPad tablet market.
It’s always important to remember that unlike Apple, which sells media and apps via iTunes to help support its devices sales, Amazon is approaching this from the opposite direction. It wants people to buy its devices so they’ll be more likely to buy other stuff.
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DiClemente takes a stab at this one, too: He figures that by 2014, the Kindle Fire and its descendants will be generating an additional $3.9 million a year from incremental e-commerce spending, driven by customers who pick up the company’s Prime shipping program along with their tablet.
And he thinks during that same year, revenue from tablet content will eclipse tablet revenue, period: He figures devices will generate $3.9 billion and content will be worth some $5.2 billion.
Back to present tense: Has anyone seen a Kindle Fire in the wild? I haven’t, and my thoroughly unscientific spot-check of my pals and peers hasn’t turned one up, either. Of course, I also recall when seeing a Kindle e-reader on the subway — many months after the e-reader’s launch — was enough to warrant a blog post.
Apple forecaster lowers his estimate of iPad sales during the holidays from 16 million to 13 million, and blames the Kindle Fire. Samsung kicks iPhone's in sales of smartphones during Q4 2011
On March 3, 2011, the late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the thinner, faster iPad 2 tablet to the media
Strong sales of the Amazon Kindle Fire have eaten into iPad sales, says Tavis McCourt of the stockbrokers Morgan Keegan, who has lowered his estimate of the number of Apple tablets sold in the fourth quarter to the end of December 2011 from 16 million to 13 million.
In a new note on Apple issued on Tuesday, McCourt said he was lowering his estimate for iPad sales after seeing data from Amazon which suggested it could have sold between 4m and 5m of its Kindle Fire tablet, "which probably means maybe 1-2m cannibalised iPad sales at most".
But McCourt raised his forecast for the number of iPhones sold from 27m to 29m, and calculates that Apple will report revenues of $37.9bn (£24.2bn), its biggest ever – although that is a slight reduction on his previous forecast of $38.1bn.
Meanwhile, the electronics giant Samsung may have sold as many as 35m smartphones in the quarter, a record for the sector. The company is expected to report its guidance for the quarter on Friday, ahead of its detailed figures later in January.
While the forecast iPhone figures would make it Apple's best-ever quarter for its smartphones, they would lag behind Samsung's by a substantial amount. The smartphone and tablet business is now Samsung's most profitable.
McCourt said that he had also lowered his estimate for the number of Macintosh computers sold slightly, from 4.9m to 4.8m. That would however still represent a 17.7% increase on last year while the rest of the PC market is forecast to have seen near-zero growth as a number of companies struggled with hard disk inventory shortages caused by floods in Thailand.
It would also mark 23 straight quarters in which Apple's Macintosh sales have grown faster than the Windows PC market.
McCourt wrote.
"We believe December will turn out to be another great quarter for Apple with share gains in Mac and iPhone product lines, and continued strong growth in iPad, although slightly slower than we originally anticipated."
"We expect Apple to continue to show strong growth in fiscal 2012 with the success of a forthcoming iPad upgrade and continued sales of iPhone 4S being the major determinants of what rate Apple can grow this year. We expect iPhone 5 in [autumn] 2012 to be a significant revenue and earnings growth driver, and a potential Apple TV as upside to our model if it comes to fruition this year.
"We do expect Y/Y [year-on-year] growth to be somewhat more challenging in March/June for Apple due to tough comparisons from fiscal 2011."
COMMENTARY: I hate it when companies like Apple report their financials and unit product sales on a fiscal year basis, because it means I have do additional work adjusting their figures to calendar year basis. Anyway, here are Apples iPad sales numbers for the calendar years 2010 and 2011 (Nine months):
- Calendar Yr Ending 12/31/10: 14.79 million
- Nine Months Ending 9/30/11: 24.67 million
Industry analyst forecasts of Apple's iPad sales for the Q4 2011 are all over the ballpark. Here's a sprinkling of those forecasts:
- Morgan Keegan's Tavis McCourt - Q4 2011: 13 million (down from 16 million)
- J.P. Morgan's Mark Moskowitz - Q4 2011: 4.7 million
- Forbes' Jason Schwartz - Q4 2011: 21.9 million
- Gartner Research - Q4 2011: 22.03 million
A lot of things are happening in the tablet space, and the Apple iPad 2 may have finally found its match in the Kindle Fire and smaller tablets that offer similar features as the iPad 2, but at a lower price point.
In a blog post dated January 8, 2011, I reported that Vizio, known for its high-quality, lower-priced HDTV's, had completely sold out of their new 8-inch Android tablet priced at $329. A company spokesman said "we underestimated demand," he did not furnish unit sales numbers, but said they were "way over six-figures." That means seven-figures or at least one million units sold.
I think that Apple better take lower-priced tablet competitors like the Amazon Kindle Fire, Vizio, Barnes & Noble Nook and others very seriously. There is a substantial market for smaller, lower-priced tablets that offer similar features as the Apple iPad 2. Last year Apple called Samsung's Galaxy Tab, a new 7-inch tablet, "D.O.A," or dead-on-arrival. If I were Apple CEO Tim Cook, I would be asking myself, "What would Steve do?"
I want to hear from tablet owners, especially iPad and Kindle Fire owners. Tell me what you think about your tablet and about the potential for smaller, lower-priced tablets with similar features like the Apple iPad 2.
Courtesy of an article dated January 9, 2011 appearing in All Things Digital and an article dated January 3, 2011 appearing in Mashable
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