Forget the iPad, Android tablet makers better fear the Kindle Fire
According to the new numbers from Flurry, the Kindle Fire has already dominated the Android tablet space, and not by a small margin. Tablet statistics are often questioned, as they usually track unit shipments and not sales. Flurry's numbers avoid that by tracking end user application sessions over time. These are strictly measuring what device is being used for actual user sessions, so the statistics are useful when comparing devices.
In November of last year, Samsung ruled the Android tablet roost with a full 63 percent of all end user sessions. The next three most used Android tablets, Acer Iconia Tab, Motorola XOOM, and ASUS Transformer Prime, only accounted for 30 percent of user sessions combined. The Kindle Fire was only used for a measly 3 percent of sessions, as it had only just arrived in town.
Fast forward to January of this year, only three months, and the numbers tell a vastly different story. The Samsung Galaxy Tab now only represents 36 percent of all user sessions, a giant drop. The Acer, Motorola, and ASUS now only account for 18 percent combined. The Amazon Kindle Fire, on the other hand, has now grabbed 36 percent of the end user application sessions. That's in less than three months.
Perhaps the most telling statistic in this analysis has to do with the Holy Grail of app developers, the paid app figures. When Flurry compares the Galaxy Tab family with the Kindle Fire, the Kindle Fire generated a whopping 2.5 times more paid app downloads than the Samsung Galaxy Tab. Amazon is firmly whooping the Android tablet pack in every category that matters, in only a few months.
With so many OEMs making Android tablets, they are really competing with each other more than with Apple's iPad. There are only so many sales to go around, and if the first three months are any indication the Kindle Fire is going to kick every Android tablet to the curb.