Looks like Amazon.com has a hit on its hands, even before its new tablet is officially released to consumers.
The Seattle company is selling pre-orders for its new Kindle Fire tablets at a rate of 2,000 an hour, or more than 50,000 per day, according to website Cult of Android, which has gotten its hands on what it describes as internal Amazon inventory documents.
If the report is accurate, and the pace continues, Amazon will have sold 2.5 million Kindle Fires prior to the Nov. 15 launch — outpacing the first month of sales for either the iPad or the iPad 2, according to the site.
Of course, at $199, the high demand isn’t a huge surprise. Based on the sales numbers, it looks like people are willing to overlook the Kindle Fire’s shortcomings compared with the iPad, including the lack of 3G mobile broadband and front-facing camera.
The big question long term is whether Amazon can turn the Kindle Fire into a good thing for its bottom line — making up for the money it’s losing on the hardware through increased sales of movies, music, Amazon Prime subscriptions and e-commerce sales.
