Amazon will take about half of all Android tablet sales during 2012, according to an estimate from Evercore Partners​ analyst Robert Cirha. The Apple iPad, though, is still seen holding the edge in the tablet world. “While Amazon’s Kindle Fire has come out of the gates strong, as expected, we see Apple maintaining its competitive lead, if anything accentuated by what now looks like the only tablet to so far mount any credible iPad challenge apparently needing to do so by selling at cost; not to mention Amazon’s success may just vaporize other ‘for profit’ Android tablet OEM roadmaps,” Cirha writes.
The Kindle Fire costs just $199 versus the iPad 2’s minimum $499. Amazon is in fact believed to be losing money on each Fire in the hopes of making it back through media sales. Most Android tablets are closer to the iPad in price or sometimes even more expensive, allowing Apple to exploit advantages such as name recognition and a greater app library.
In spite of all this, Cirha has lowered some estimates for Apple’s current quarter, for instance pulling revenue back to $39.1 billion from $39.4 billion. An EPS forecast has been shrunk from $10.28 to $10.26, and iPad units have been tweaked from 15 million to 14 to compensate for “channel inventory reductions heading into March’s iPad refresh.” Positively, Mac numbers have been pushed from 5 million to 5.2 million on the basis of MacBook sales, while a gross margin target has been raised to 41.1 percent on an assumption of 30 million iPhone sales.
