Amazon’s hot sales of the Kindle Fire during the holidays may be dropping fast in the new year, if industry rumors are accurate. Part suppliers claimed to Digitimes Friday that, after shipping six million of the Android tablets in the fall, orders were now down to three million for the winter. The drop was “in line” with anticipation of a post-holiday drop, the insiders claimed, although such a decline would still be steep.
Confirmation isn’t likely to come from Amazon. The company is well-known for refusing to provide definite Kindle sales numbers and, in reporting four million Kindle devices sold in December, wouldn’t break down how many of those were the Kindle Fire versus e-paper models.
Touchscreen panel orders from Apple were still seen as “robust” by the supply chain sources and could point to the iPad regaining a wider market share lead, in the post holidays market.
Estimates from IDC had the Kindle Fire dropping the iPad to 59 percent of the market in the last three months of 2011.
