Amazon’s Kindle Fire is creating quite the buzz in the tablet market donning its modest $199 price tag and racking up substantial pre-sale figures.
The Kindle Fire has been selling at a rate of 20,000 units per day since it became available for pre-order on September 28, the same day the product was announced, according to the market research firm eDataSource.
Combining the 95,000 units sold on the first day with the estimated 20,000 sold in the six days following the products debut, nearly 215,000 Kindle Fires have been sold as of Oct. 5.
Apple sold nearly 2.4 million iPad 2s during their first month of sales with 1 million of those sales occurring on the first weekend. With the Kindle Fire set to be released on November 15 and its sales figures already on record, the device could prove to be a formidable opponent.
“The Amazon Kindle Fire has a chance to succeed because Amazon is the only major company that can compete with Apple’s infrastructure,” said junior Aerospace Engineering student Chip Andrews. “Many people resort to Amazon for a significant amount of their online shopping already, and the company has built a friendly book and media providing service.”
The Kindle Fire features a 7-inch multi touch display with 1020 x 600 pixel resolution and anti-reflective treatment. It has a dual core processor, 1GB of memory and 8GB of storage – which holds up to 80 apps, 10 movies, 800 songs, or 6,000 books.
“Honestly, I still think of Amazon as just an online store. So the fact that they are making tablets doesn’t really make me want to buy one,” said second year Masters of Science in Engineering student Matt Mosteller. “I guess they’re a price point option though. So since they’re about half as much as an iPad it makes sense that they would also be half as good.”
The Nextbook Premium 8 from E Fun is another tablet on the market that is offered at a meager price. Selling for $299, the Nextbook offers an 8-inch display and a 2 megapixel front facing camera. Other than that, the Nextbook is essentially the same as the Kindle Fire.