
Kindle Fire pre-orders exceeding 2,000 per hour - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/kindle-fire-pre-orders-exceeding-2000-per-hour-2011104/
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tylerrooney
I 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
this doesn't seem like the sort of leak that anybody is going to be too angry
about.

~~~
pavel_lishin
The cynic's money is on this "leak" being a PR stunt.

~~~
chaz
Perhaps. 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
> 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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tomkarlo
The 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
It 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
Given 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.

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cek
People 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.

~~~
josefresco
Shhh 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
I'd say Amazon's the exception, not Apple. HTC, Nokia, Samsung, etc. aren't
making money on content.

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cletus
What 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
Different audiences. It's the standard they would hold themselves to.

~~~
aphexairlines
That 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.

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orijing
> 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
And 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-
Kin...](http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Sells-Kindle-Fire-
at-Low-Profit-Margin-to-Promote-Online-Merchandize-Sales.aspx)

~~~
PeterFruter
Did you not read the article? The author provides a link. Here's another one:
[http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4228505/Kindle-
Fire-...](http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4228505/Kindle-Fire-
profitable-at-estimated--150-BoM)

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/linked/2010/02/10/isuppli>

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enneff
It really irks me to see leaked screenshots of internal tools.

~~~
troymc
On the other hand, this "leak" is very good news for Amazon, right before a
major day for Apple. The tech journalists will have to cover the Amazon story,
thereby eating into their Apple coverage.

~~~
fragsworth
That is a bit too convenient.

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andrewljohnson
This 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
It'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.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Most articles I've seen post-unveiling say the launch firmware will be (based
on) 2.3. The bit about it running 2.1 is leftover from the rumor mill (which
isn't surprising, odds are 2.1 was just out when they started the project).
I'm more curious to see if Amazon will keep in sync with ICS (presuming Google
makes good on their word to open the source) or give Android a proper total
forking.

~~~
fpgeek
On the subject of total forking, I noticed an interesting tidbit today:

(a) the Amazon Appstore's guidelines say Android 1.6 and up is supported (with
no other qualifications) (b) they have Honeycomb apps in the Appstore

That's a small suggestion that they're looking to keep Android compatibility
going forward (otherwise why let in apps that can't run on the Kindle Fire
today?). Perhaps they were just trying to not tip their hand, but restricting
things to Gingerbread and below doesn't sound that unusual to me.

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xutopia
Has anyone actually held one in their hands and made a decent video review of
it?

~~~
revorad
This is the only one I've seen - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-oUrzy0Lvw>

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coob
I 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?

~~~
revorad
But I equally hate "tap" and "touch".

~~~
thom
Press?

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jnorthrop
I wonder if those orders include stores ordering for their inventory.

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burgerbrain
Do stores (other than Amazon of course..) sell Kindles?

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jbl
Best Buy certainly does. I believe they are also available at Target.

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bdonlan
I would expect them to receive shipments directly from the manufacturer, not
via amazon retail warehouses...

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iamdev
Here is a heatmap I made of Kindle Fire sales by warehouse:
<http://yfrog.com/z/kj34txp>

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hugacow
I 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>

I don't have any reason to believe it is, except that I heard it was the same
manufacturer. Is that correct?

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thirdhaf
That 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!

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ck2
Resale 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)

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TylerE
To repeat history: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

~~~
ellyagg
It'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. ;)

