Walmart stops Kindle sales, following Target’s lead

By Ed Sutherland on Sep 20, 2012

Amazon’s $199 Kindle and low-price retailer Walmart would appear to be a match made in discount heaven, right? Then how do you explain today’s news that Walmart is kicking Amazon to the curb? In a statement, Walmart only says the decision is part of its “overall merchandising strategy.”

“Recently, Walmart Stores, Inc. made a business decision to not carry current Amazon products beyond our purchase commitments and existing inventory,” the Bentonville, Ark. firm told store managers Wednesday. In the memo reported by Reuters, Walmart officials said the stores will continue to offer “a broad assortment of tablets, eReaders and accessories at a variety of great price points.” Read More

 

Apple just scrapes past Amazon in JD Power’s tablet satisfaction survey

By Ed Sutherland on Sep 13, 2012

Apple’s iPad is once again ranked as the No. 1 tablet in the United States. However, the company’s lead over Amazon’s Kindle Fire is as razor-thin as its products. According to customer satisfaction researcher JD Power, Apple scored 848 points with Amazon close behind with 842 out of 1,000.

The Cupertino, Calif. firm can be thankful that US consumers found the iPad tops for performance and ease of use — categories heavily weighed in the survey — while Amazon hit it out of the ballpark in price, an area carrying just 16 percent of the final score… Read More

 

Wall Street: Amazon’s new Kindle Fire unlikely to hurt iPad Sales

By Ed Sutherland on Sep 7, 2012

Should Apple be nervous following Amazon introducing the Kindle Fire HD Thursday? No, says Wall Street. However, Google and Microsoft could be sweating bullets, analysts are telling investors Friday.

“Apple still rules the tablet world,” writes Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets. Indeed, the expected release of a 7.85-inch ‘iPad mini‘ will expand the the company’s customer base, “potentially even surpassing sales of the regular-sized iPad.” In short, Apple investors should relax… Read More

 

Amazon refreshes the Kindle lineup, targets the iPad with all-new Kindle Fire HD

By Christian Zibreg on Sep 6, 2012

Following recent product launches by technology giants Samsung, Googlerola and Microkia, the online retail giant Amazon summoned select members of the press to a media event in Los Angeles, California. As previously hinted, the company is expected to unveil half a dozen new Kindle devices, including a ten-inch tablet to take Apple’s iPad head on.

Some people even hope the company will launch a smartphone of its own, just to make fall phone options a tad more interesting. As always, iDB is watching the announcement so you don’t have to, bringing you everything worth knowing. Here are the goodies Amazon has in store for us (just don’t call them gadgets, will ya’?)… Read More

 

Insiders say Amazon could unveil smartphone tomorrow

By Cody Lee on Sep 5, 2012

We’re nearing the end of the two-week run of product announcements leading up to Apple’s iPhone event. Last week, Samsung unveiled its Galaxy Note 2. And today, both Nokia and Motorola showed off new hardware.

Tomorrow, Amazon will play the final opening act with a media event in Los Angeles, where it’s expected to unveil a handful of new Kindle tablets. But according to a new report, it may have a few surprises up its sleeves… Read More

 

Report: Apple using MacBook supplier AU Optronics and LG Display for iPad mini display

By Ed Sutherland on Aug 31, 2012

As we get closer to the expected October launch of Apple’s “iPad mini,” details are emerging about how the Cupertino, Calif. company is reshaping its supplier base in the face of growing demand for handheld devices. AU Optronics, which made MacBook displays, is now building parts for the smaller iPad, Bloomberg reports Friday.

LG Display is also among the suppliers for the smaller tablet, according to Bloomberg. Read More

 

Amazon: Kindle Fire owns 22% of US tablet sales

By Ed Sutherland on Aug 30, 2012

Amazon’s Kindle Fire owns 22 percent of the US tablet market, the online retail giant announced Thursday. The figure comes as Amazon preps to likely announce a new tablet next week, along with girding to take-on Google’s $199 Nexus 7 device.

According to Amazon, “in just nine months, Kindle Fire has captured 22 percent of sales in the US,” PaidContent reports. Accustomed to being fed amorphous Kindle marketing stats like “a lot” and “most in our history,” the concreteness of the announcement was surprising. However, after the initial shock, there began questions, like 22 percent of what? Read More

 

FCC clears Amazon’s iPad contender, Samsung launches Galaxy Note 10.1

By Christian Zibreg on Aug 15, 2012

Google’s Nexus 7 tablet launch a month ago has literally obsoleted Amazon’s seven-inch Kindle Fire overnight. Three weeks ago, Reuters claimed Amazon was working on half a dozen new Android tablets, among them one with a larger display designed to take the iPad on the high-end.

The rumors were true as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) yesterday cleared an Amazon tablet with a larger display. Meanwhile, Samsung today launched its 10.1-inch Galaxy Note tablet with much fanfare.

It comes with a stylus (please, no jokes), has juicy hardware (a 1.4 GHz quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM) plus some interesting multitasking features, such as split-screen functionality and a pop-up video player… Read More

 

Half a dozen new Kindle Fire tablets coming to challenge iPad

By Christian Zibreg on Jul 23, 2012

Confirming an earlier AllThingsD story, Staple CEO Demos Parneros told Reuters today that Amazon is about to unleash half a dozen new Kindle Fire tablets, including a brand new ten-inch model obviously engineered to take Apple’s iPad head on.

The online retailer recently acquired 3D mapping startup UpNext, another indication that it means business when it comes to tablets. And of course, the company is also thought to be readying a smartphone of its own… Read More

 

Amazon outs GameCircle, it’s the Game Center for Kindle Fire games

By Christian Zibreg on Jul 11, 2012

Amazon is keen on taking its Kindle Fire tablet beyond reading e-stuff, listening to music and watching movies and has today announced GameCircle, a brand new application programming interface (API) for developers, with social gaming features akin to Apple’s Game Center on iOS devices (and soon Mountain Lion Macs). It’s got the basics nailed, the stuff like leaderboards and achievements. Amazon is hoping developers will quickly pick it up and enrich their Kindle Fire games and who knows, it may come in handy if the company decides upon releasing a phone of its own… Read More

 

Purported iPad Mini screen size compared with other tablets

By Cody Lee on Jul 10, 2012

In line with all of the recent speculation regarding the rumored “iPad Mini,” one developer decided to see how such a device would stack up against other popular tablets.

What you see above is a comparison between the screen sizes of various slates, including the Kindle Fire, the Nexus 7, the current iPad, and the purported iPad Mini… Read More

 

Amazon launching new Kindle Fire with better display, camera in Q3?

By Christian Zibreg on Jul 8, 2012

Online retailer Amazon has reportedly informed select developers that it will be launching a new version of its Kindle Fire tablet some time in the second half of this year, possibly in the third quarter, in time for the holiday shopping season. The new Fire allegedly has a much improved display running at HD-ready 1280-by-800 pixels, matching Google’s Nexus 7… Read More

 

Competition: Motorola exiting feature phones, 7″ slates from Amazon, Google loom

By Christian Zibreg on Jun 25, 2012

Several reports this morning sourced from Taiwanese supply chain indicate some pretty interesting reshuffling going on in the mobile space outside Apple. Samsung is shooting to cumulatively sell ten million Galaxy S III units by early July while Motorola Mobility is mulling exiting the feature phones business in order to focus all their energies on “innovative products”.

In the non-iPad space, a contract manufacturer has apparently landed orders for both Amazon’s seven-inch Kindle Fire tablet and Google’s Nexus-branded expected to make an appearance at Google I/O on Wednesday… Read More

 

iPad web traffic drops a little, Nook overtakes Kindle Fire

By Christian Zibreg on Jun 14, 2012

An interesting change in tablet web traffic in June, as observed by ad network Chitika which sampled hundreds of millions of ad impressions across mobile apps that incorporate its solution. While they’re by no means an accurate representative of the market, the numbers still outline market trend changes.

Apple’s iPad dropped a bit in June, but the biggest change comes in Barnes & Noble’s Nook passing Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Of all non-iPad tablets, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab remains the most widely-used device… Read More

 

iPad maintains its US tablet market dominance as Kindle Fire continues to fall

By Cody Lee on Jun 5, 2012

TUAW points to a newly-published ChangeWave survey today regarding the wish lists of potential tablet buyers. And surprise, surprise, the iPad is still miles ahead of the competition in terms of consumer demand.

According to ChangeWave’s data, collected from a poll of almost 3,000 American consumers, a staggering 73% of people who plan to buy a tablet in the next 90 days will be getting an iPad… Read More

 

iPad gulps more than two-thirds of market as Amazon’s Fire falls from grace

By Christian Zibreg on May 3, 2012

A whopping 91 percent of tech moms want it for Mother’s Day instead of flowers, teachers deem it the future of education (though DoJ disagrees), it’s used everywhere for work, has managed to break Amazon’s monopolistic grip on the publishing industry - and yet it shows no sign of slowing down.

And even as rivals face downturn, folks are picking their iPads like there’s no tomorrow. This is the crux of latest market tablet survey by research firm IDG which pegged Apple’s worldwide tablet share in Q1 2012 at 68 percent, up from 54.7-percent in the year-ago quarter.

Apple’s growth largely came at the expense of Amazon’s Kindle Fire which plummeted from 16.8 percent share in Q4 2011 to just four percent share in Q1 2012. That’s a staggering 12.8-percentage points market share loss in just one quarter. Another way to look at it: Amazon shipped only 700,000 Kindle Fire units in Q1 2012… Read More

 

Opinion: why Apple forced Target to boot Kindle over “conflict of interest”

By Christian Zibreg on May 2, 2012

As you probably know by now, this morning’s big news has Target dropping Kindle hardware from their retail stores. The story has been officially confirmed by a spokesperson for the nation’s second-largest discount retailer, after Walmart. The resulting finger-pointing, largely centered around Apple and its iPad, is based on an unnamed source mentioning a “conflict of interest” as Apple apparently put the arm on Target… Read More

 

Kindle Fire now accounts for over half of Android tablet market

By Cody Lee on Apr 27, 2012

Still wondering why Apple would want to enter the budget tablet market with a 7.85-inch iPad? Perhaps this will help shine some light on the matter.

ComScore, a highly regarded research firm, is out with a new report today regarding the current landscape of Android tablets. And guess which slate is leading the pack? The $199 Amazon Kindle Fire… Read More

 

New survey confirms the iPad’s lead in tablet market

By Jake Smith on Feb 23, 2012

Last week, iSuppli released some interesting numbers on the current state of the tablet market. The report claimed that the iPad dropped from 64 percent market share in Q3 to 57 percent in Q4, and that Amazon’s Kindle Fire was able to grab 14 percent of the tablet market during the holiday quarter.

Adding to the numbers released by iSuppli, research group NDP has released their report on the current state of the tablet market, notes TechCrunch. No surprise, the iPad is still king holding a comfortable lead, with Amazon in second place… Read More

 

The Kindle Fire is gaining market share but the iPad remains the king

By Guest Author on Feb 16, 2012

Some interesting news has been released today regarding the recent success of the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s flagship tablet device. According to iSuppli, Amazon managed to grab a 14% share of the tablet market in the last financial quarter, while Apple’s market share dropped from 64% in Q3 to 57% in Q4.

Apple released the iPad 2 nearly a year ago so it makes perfect sense that demand will drop as the year goes on, especially when new products like the Fire get released later in the year. I expect market share to significantly increase further in Apple’s favor when iPad 3 drops… Read More

 
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