Totally anecdotally, among all the tablet owners I know Fires have been gifts and other tablets have been self-purchases. I also know some folks for whom the g

Totally anecdotally, among all the tablet owners I know Fires have been gifts and other tablets have been self-purchases. I also know some folks for whom the gift of a Kindle Fire ended up being the icebreaker that convinced them to spring for an iPad. Assuming those are indicative of real trends, that's got to be very disconcerting for Amazon. I doubt that dedicated e-readers are going to drive ebooks for a whole lot longer. If they can't bring out a strong contender in the tablet space, they stand to lose their command of the market.