The Amazon Kindle Fire might have poached one million to two million iPad 2 sales during the holidays, Morgan Keegan analyst Travis McCourt argued. He lowered his expectations for Apple’s tablet shipments from 16 million to 13 million on the assumption that Amazon’s $199 tablet was drawing away the more cost-conscious buyers. McCourt based it in part on Amazon’s own claims, which he saw as leading to between four million and five million Kindle Fires trading hands.
Amazon is so far the only Android tablet designer known to have mainstream success, and its growth has mostly been credited to a combination of the price and tight integration into the Amazon book and video ecosystems. Some concern exists as to whether or not Amazon can sustain this as cheaper tablets. Speculation that the iPad 2 may drop to $399 or even $299 once the iPad 3 arrives has raised the possibility that customers might skip the Kindle Fire.
Conservatism also ran through McCourt’s Mac estimates, which dipped slightly from 4.9 million to 4.8 million. Typically, Apple ships some of its highest Mac numbers in the fall, and the consensus so far is for over five million.
