Though IHS iSuppli expects Amazon to ship 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablets during this year’s fourth quarter, Apple remains confident that its position of strength in the tablet market will continue. According to the analysts at J.P. Morgan, Apple is “not too concerned about the low-priced entrants.”
Last week, the financial firm’s analysts slightly reduced their iPad unit sales estimates for the quarter currently under way. After a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, they indicated that their earlier iPad trim might have been too cautious.
“We think that Apple is not seeing much pressure from lower-priced tablets, yet,” wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz in an investor note.
“If anything, we think that Apple views the Kindle Fire as a device that stands to bring incremental consumers to the tablet market, and here, these consumers could gravitate to more feature-rich experiences,” Moskowitz added.
IHS likewise believes the Kindle Fire will help fuel the expansion of the tablet market overall. The research firm projects that tablet shipments will grow from 64.7 million units this year to reach 287.2 million units in 2015.
Appealing To Prosumers
The Kindle Fire’s unique Amazon-centric user interface is what enables the online retail giant to sell the new tablet below the device’s actual hardware cost. “Once these users are on the site, Amazon hopes to sell them all kinds of other goods, ranging from shoes to diapers,” IHS analysts noted on Friday.
However, many prosumers and enterprise customers may find the Kindle Fire’s sales-driven focus too limiting, though the platform is helped to some extent by the subset of Android apps that run on Amazon’s new tablet. More than 50 percent of the media tablets in the hands of U.S. consumers today are being used for at least some work-related activities, according to Forrester Research.
Microsoft hopes…
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