Kindle Fire Moves 4.7 Million Units, Cuts Into iPad's Market Share

From DailyTech: However, the IDC Group brings surprising news that Android is finally starting to do in the tablet space what it has done in the smartphone space -- gobble up Apple's market share.

Apple shipped 110.5 percent more tablets in Q4 2011 than in Q4 2010 -- 15.4m units, to be precise. Still, its gleaming success was spoiled by Android newcomer Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), whose budget-friendly Kindle Fire exploded onto the scene. Despite selling almost exclusively in the U.S., the Kindle Fire moved 4.7 million units in Q4 2011 -- almost a third of the volume of Apple.

It's not surprising to see a fresh face helping to carry Android to the top. After all, Android's initial smartphone surge was led by HTC Corp. (TPE:2498), a company that rose from obscurity to become a household name. Still, the story in the tablet space is a bit different.

Whereas HTC grabbed its piece of the smartphone market by beating Apple hardware-wise in many ways, with high-end handsets, Amazon's approach has been the opposite. It debuted a 7-inch tablet at the very low price of $199 USD.

The launch of the 7-inch Kindle Fire was seen as a gamble. Amazon crafted its own custom branch of Android for the tablet, a move that could easily have backfired. However, the device was buoyed by its strong hardware sheet for its price, with a Texas Instruments, Inc. (TXN) 1.0 GHz OMAP 4 4430 dual-core CPU and a sporty PowerVR SGX540 GPU from Imagination Technologies Plc. (LON:IMG). While not exactly Earth-shattering from a price agnostic perspective, for a sub-$200 device, that's a pretty mean hardware spec.

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