An Early Sign the Amazon Kindle Fire May Do Well
In the continuing debate over whether there is a tablet market or just an iPad market, the early signs for the iPad's toughest competitor yet, the Amazon Kindle Fire, are good. It became the number one “Most Wished For” electronics product on Amazon.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Kindle Fire arrives into a debate over whether a general tablet market exists at all or only an iPad market — with Apple's device accounting for 97% of tablet web traffic, the question has been whether any rival can register. Last week's leaked sales figures already suggested the Fire was tracking toward outselling the iPad, and this week's data point is demand-side rather than supply-side: the device has become the number one 'Most Wished For' electronics product on Amazon's own storefront.
That channel detail matters. The Fire will be sold through the same retail machine that is now surfacing it to shoppers, an advantage no other iPad challenger has had. Separately, confirmed trademark filings for Kindle Fire and Amazon Silk have fed an unconfirmed report that Amazon might spin the Fire business into a company called Seesaw — a sign of how structurally serious Amazon treats the device.
First-order effects
- Amazon enters the Fire's launch with hard pre-order demand evidence from its own storefront, de-risking its reported bet on selling hardware near cost and recouping margin through content.
- Apple faces its first challenger whose distribution runs through the largest online retailer rather than through carrier shelves or big-box stores.
Second-order effects
- Other Android tablet makers are squeezed from both ends — the iPad above on brand and ecosystem, a $199 Fire below on price — forcing them to justify mid-range hardware that neither matches.
- Media and app sellers gain a second meaningful storefront to negotiate with, since every Fire shipped routes purchases through Amazon's content business.
Third-order effects
- If the wishlist signal converts to sustained sales, the tablet market bifurcates structurally: a premium single-vendor iPad tier and a commodity tier where hardware is a loss-leading window onto a retail ecosystem — a model closer to gaming consoles than to PCs.
- Regulators and publishers watching the e-book pricing fight get a new variable, because a successful Fire deepens Amazon's leverage over digital book distribution.
The trend: Tablets are splitting into a premium iPad market and a content-subsidized commodity tier, with Amazon's retail-and-media ecosystem making it the first credible occupant of the latter.