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Kindle Fire pre-orders exceeding 2,000 per hour
- jnorthrop 15y agoI wonder if those orders include stores ordering for their inventory.
- burgerbrain 15y agoDo stores (other than Amazon of course..) sell Kindles?
- jbl 15y agoBest Buy certainly does. I believe they are also available at Target.
- bdonlan 15y agoI would expect them to receive shipments directly from the manufacturer, not via amazon retail warehouses...
- buro9 15y agoYes. A quick search confirms Best Buy list them for instore sale only: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17071&type=page&st=kindle&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17071&typ... I believe others are getting them too. Can't recall exactly where I read it. I doubt that the figures are included in the leaked report, as that speaks of fulfilment centers, which I would understand to be customer fulfilment centers. They're more likely to get X boxes shipped to Best Buy (and whoever) direct from manufacturer to avoid additional shipping costs.
- tomkarlo 15y agoI believe Staples and/or Office Max also sell Kindles, although I don't know about the newest models.
- enneff 15y agoIt really irks me to see leaked screenshots of internal tools.
- smackfu 15y agoI would not be surprised if every employee that did this query recently is getting a nice chat from corporate security.
- buro9 15y agoYou're assuming that the interface audits access. The vast majority of the internal tools I've seen have not audited, they are utilities that are built for a specific purpose and it's not anticipated that someone would leak information out of it. To me, that looks a bit like a SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) report. If so, unless they've gone to great lengths to audit access... it isn't audited and the web server logs aren't going to help. I'm with enneff on it irking. But at the same time, I would rather occasional disrespectful leaks like this than locked down environments that would prevent whistleblowers exposing the really bad stuff that happens (not in reference to AMZN, just in general). That's why it irks me personally, not because I care about this data, but because it's irresponsible and disrespectful and helps to bring in the kind of culture that makes it harder for the whistleblowers to operate in when it comes to things that should be leaked. I've probably phrased the last part of this post appallingly.
- potatolicious 15y ago> "You're assuming that the interface audits access." Former Amazonian here - Amazon's internal tools are not part of the vast majority, I'll tell you that much. I have no insider information, but it would not surprise me at all if whoever leaked this got a nice chat today.
- adambyrtek 15y agoIt doesn't have to be some elaborate audit functionality. Every reasonable internal application has to have access control and at least some basic logging in place. Based just on that you can already infer a lot.
- xutopia 15y agoHas anyone actually held one in their hands and made a decent video review of it?
- guelo 15y agoI don't believe so.
- revorad 15y agoThis is the only one I've seen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oUrzy0Lvw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oUrzy0Lvw
- coob 15y agoI cannot understand the irrational hatred I feel when someone says 'click' when talking about interaction with a touchscreen. Where's the click Mr. Peter Demo Man?
- mydiamarks 15y agoKindle Fire video demo broken down by subject : http://www.mydiamarks.com/mydiamark/Amazon+Kindle+Fire+demo_278320 http://www.mydiamarks.com/mydiamark/Amazon+Kindle+Fire+demo_... enjoy
- thirdhaf 15y agoThat page is an unmitigated disaster on a mobile device. Round fill-ins to obstruct my fairly small screen, weird auto-snap to ensure I can't get a look at the content I want. I think this has inspired me to start a wall of shame for mobile device sites!
- tomkarlo 15y agoThe math on this article (taking pre-order rate from the first few days of availability and extending it to the ship date) is silly, as much as I'm an Amazon and Kindle fan. Journalists need to stick to reporting the facts and not making silly projections of the future based on questionable math. It's similarly ridiculous to expect that orders will "ramp up" as the launch date gets closer. The closer you get to the release date, the less incentive there is to pre-order (because you will be way back in the line anyway) and the more incentive there is to wait a little longer and see the early reviews / user reports. I may be wrong about that but it's not like the reporter provides any support for the assertion that orders will climb as the release date gets close.
- sliverstorm 15y agoIt is entirely possible there will be a "hump" in orders though. There was no build-up to the Fire, so plenty of potentially interested consumers probably hadn't even heard of the Fire until a while after pre-orders started.
- tomkarlo 15y agoGiven that the NYT and most major media outlets (including TV programs) covered the Fire the day it came out, you'd have to be living in a pretty deep hole (at least in the US) to have not heard about the release. Google News shows about 6,000 publications covering the release. It seems unlikely they'll get even 10% of that much attention again before the ship date.
- ck2 15y agoResale of these is going to be crazy. Pick one up on the flipside for $100 after xmas. Bluetooth? No HDMI? No Camera? No Microphone? No micro/SD slot? No GPS? No 3G? No Android Market? No (only Amazon Market)
- TylerE 15y agoTo repeat history: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
- ellyagg 15y agoIt's good for CmdrTacoMalda that he's too busy trying to get his site back up after its current HNing. Otherwise, he'd probably have time to read and be annoyed again by this comment. ;)
- mmatants 15y agoI have seen this feature "chart" pasted into HN posts before. Didn't folks slam the original iPhone the same way? Not to say that the Fire is a guaranteed hit, but I think that as a consumption device aimed at consumers it needs very little of those features.
- burgerbrain 15y agoThe iphone and the ipod before it..
- troymc 15y agoAmazon probably did market research to determine what people would really want. When I read your list of things the Fire doesn't have, I realized I wouldn't miss any of them.
- Leynos 15y agoIf it's missing an SD card slot, I'd miss that. 8GB isn't that much space when you're talking video. That said, $200 is getting dangerously near the comfort zone for a device purely bought with the intention of using it around the house (where WiFi negates the need for large onboard storage).
- tylerrooney 15y agoI find it pretty obnoxious that someone leaked this. This is classic "ruining it for everyone". That app, when I worked at Amazon, was open to any employee. It would totally suck if they had to restrict access because of some idiot. I always thought it was pretty awesome that I could randomly query all sorts of data at Amazon.
- notatoad 15y agothis doesn't seem like the sort of leak that anybody is going to be too angry about.
- pavel_lishin 15y agoThe cynic's money is on this "leak" being a PR stunt.
- kenjackson 15y agoI usually don't go for the conspiracy theory. But my first thought after reading the stuff about the Fire was that I should probably get in my order for a second one soon if I want it to show up before the holidays. Although leaking the other Kindle data doesn't seem as convenient.
- chaz 15y agoPerhaps. But don't you think they can put out a press release that would be covered by every major newspaper, online and offline? Or Bezos could give an interview with the WSJ, NYT, or anyone he chooses. Why would they leak it CultofAndroid.com, a second or third tier niche tech blog?
- pavel_lishin 15y ago> Why would they leak it CultofAndroid.com, a second or third tier niche tech blog? I can't really answer that, but this article is currently #2 here. Can't argue with results, right?
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- cek 15y agoPeople have to get it out of their heads that Amazon believes it will make serious coin on selling the devices. The estimates of how much the Fire cost to make are hugely speculative and do not account for a bunch of other Amazon's costs, such as affiliates marketing. The pricing at $199 means Amazon's goal is to drive volume. The pricing of the $79 standard Kindle means Amazon's goal is to drive EVEN MORE VOLUME. The pricing of $0 for the Kindle reader on the PC, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and browser means Amazon's goal is to drive EVEN MORE VOLUME. Why? Because they monitize by selling content via their cloud service and by delivering an end-to-end consumer experience across MULTIPLE devices. Stop focusing on the shiny device. I know it's pretty and you can touch it, but the value proposition has shifted. Devices no longer matter (in relative terms). What matters is how an experience can be delivered ACROSS these entities: experience = people + devices + services Plural.
- dmix 15y agoI don't know. It seemed to me that everyone was pretty aware of the fact that their not trying to profit on the hardware and that selling content was the main goal. Even when they released the original Kindle, selling ebooks was clearly the main focus and that turned out quite well for them. The story is still relevant in that people are buying them at a rapid rate.
- josefresco 15y agoShhh don' tell Apple that who still makes most of their profit from shiny devices. They also sell content, but it's not the biggest slice of their pie. They may be the lone exception, but a large one at that.
- ceejayoz 15y agoI'd say Amazon's the exception, not Apple. HTC, Nokia, Samsung, etc. aren't making money on content.
- product50 15y agoNot people, but you need to understand that many of us already know this. The point is that the devices are selling. And people will buy content for it. Selling the devices is the first step and that is all this article is saying.
- iamdev 15y agoHere is a heatmap I made of Kindle Fire sales by warehouse: http://yfrog.com/z/kj34txp http://yfrog.com/z/kj34txp
- orijing 15y ago> If Amazon really is making $50 per Kindle Fire sale that translates to $125 million in revenue on day one The author doesn't know what revenue really means. Revenue is the total cash taken, not the cash left after paying the manufacturers. He means gross margins, although the 25% GM is dubious.
- cpeterso 15y agoAnd where did the author get the "making $50 per Kindle Fire sale" number? From what I've read, each Fire costs Amazon about $192 for parts plus $18 for manufacturing: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Sells-Kindle-Fire-at-Low-Profit-Margin-to-Promote-Online-Merchandize-Sales.aspx http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Sells-Kin...
- PeterFruter 15y agoDid you not read the article? The author provides a link. Here's another one: http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4228505/Kindle-Fire-profitable-at-estimated--150-BoM http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4228505/Kindle-Fire-... p.s. Why do HN readers keep quoting iSuppli as though it's a trusted source? http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/isuppli http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/02/10/isuppli
- cletus 15y agoWhat surprises me about this is the reaction to the leak. If the leak were about Apple, there's a vocal group that would be defending the leakers as doing the right thing, like they did something moral, and decrying Apple's efforts to keep things secret. With Google, again there seems to be some sense of entitlement to internal Google emails, products and decisions, although the detractors aren't quite as fervent as they are in Google's case. But Amazon? For some reason everyone seems to be all over whoever leaked this screenshot of an internal tool. Why the double standard? As for the numbers themselves, they look positive but not mind-blowing. This probably translates to selling 1M+ at launch, which is a good, solid start. I own an iPad 2 and am tempted to get one of these anyway, just as an impulse buy.
- 0x12 15y agoDifferent audiences. It's the standard they would hold themselves to.
- aphexairlines 15y agoThat sounds about right. I don't want to lose access to these great tools. I don't want the lockdown trend to continue here. I don't want it to be more difficult to make sure my corner of the retail site works well with Silk if I can no longer browse through its source code.
- Retric 15y agoWell if it was sustained it would be 2k / hour = 48k / day = ~1.4 million a month which is a little below the iPad but no that far. However, most likely it's an early peak which is far less impressive. Edit: For comparison iPad sold ~2million a month for 12 months. http://ipod.about.com/od/ipadmodelsandterms/f/ipad-sales-to-date.htm http://ipod.about.com/od/ipadmodelsandterms/f/ipad-sales-to-...
- hugacow 15y agoI got one, and the only thing I'm worried about is that the touchscreen might be lame like the Nook Color's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHH6mdH0WU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHH6mdH0WU I don't have any reason to believe it is, except that I heard it was the same manufacturer. Is that correct?
- andrewljohnson 15y agoThis is about how many iPads Apple sells, just at a much lower price point. I imagine these numbers are going to grow rapidly once people actually see the hardware. The market isn't even close to tapped.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoIt's also worth remembering that the Kindle Fire's firmware is based off of Android 2.1. There are some major performance improvements in 2.2 and 2.3 (JITing, better kernel memory management, concurrent garbage collection, etc.) amongst a lot of other improvements. It seems likely that Amazon will refresh the firmware for the Fire in a few months, that will only increase sales. As far as the market overall, it's effectively untapped at this point. Long term, tablets are going to be the dominant personal computing device. That's a market of, say, 1-2 billion tablets within the next 10 years. Definitely not tapped.
- trobertson 15y agoAs far as I know, there hasn't been any definite information on the difference between the Kindle stack and the Android 2.1 stack. I would be very surprised if Amazon hasn't done some downstream merging or porting of the features you mentioned, or been working on similar speed and performance improvements on their own. At this point, Amazon knows that they need a fast, performant tablet in order to do well in the market. Historically speaking, they know that moving first (into the non-premium tablet market) will not guarantee success. Quality does. In regards to the tablet market, I'm not sure about 1-2 billion tablet customers. That's 1-2 out of every seven people owning a tablet, which is probably not realistic. I can see an easy 500 million customer in 5 years, which is a very conservative estimate. Whether the trend will continue past 1 billion, though, isn't really predictable right now. If tablet do end up becoming the computers for non-techies, though, then your prediction will probably hold, though it may be more like 15 years.
- fpgeek 15y agoThe Kindle Fire supports VP8 out-of-the-box. Native Android support for VP8 didn't arrive until Gingerbread (2.3.3, to be exact). Even without official confirmation this is a pretty significant tell that the Kindle Fire is Gingerbread-based.