Personally I don't think they are trying to become the next big hardware manufacturer. I think they are making the Fire devices to drive consumption of Amazon s

Personally I don't think they are trying to become the next big hardware manufacturer. I think they are making the Fire devices to drive consumption of Amazon services, similar to how Google made Android to drive usage of Google services (and made Nexus devices to drive Android). Which means they don't need to be a huge hit in the device market, and they don't even necessarily need the device division to be profitable. The biggest clue to me is the Kindle e-reader. It seems obvious they created the Kindle to drive Amazon book sales. Doubly so with the incredibly aggressive price reduction generation-over-generation.