Is an iPad for life & a Kindle Fire just for Christmas?

IDC have just published their press release on their  Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker which separately tracks estimated Tablet Shipments.

According to these estimates Kindle Fire shipments, with a market share of just over 4%, look to have been well below a million in the first quarter.

Their preliminary figures (with our percentage derivations and use of previous releases etc etc) shows we believe the following:

Their release comments:   “Apple shipped 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, down from 15.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, and grew its worldwide share from 54.7% in 4Q11 to 68% in 1Q12. Amazon, which stormed into the market in 4Q11 to grab second place with 16.8% of the market on shipment of 4.8 million units, saw its share decline significantly in the first quarter to just over 4%, falling to third place as a result. Samsung took advantage of Amazon’s weakness to regain the number two position while Lenovo vaulted into the number four spot, followed by Barnes & Noble at number five.”

These results must be extremely disappointing for amazon  particularly as quarter 4 shipments only started in mid November.

“Apple reasserted its dominance in the market this quarter, driving huge shipment totals at a time when all but a few Android vendors saw their numbers drop precipitously after posting big gains during the holiday buying season,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices at IDC.

Whilst amazon, hopefully, will as with their Kindle Touch ereaders, launch the Kindle Fires here in the UK and internationally they possibly are hopeful of significantly increased volumes following a relaunch later in the year likely with a larger 9” screen.

Maybe Steve Jobs had a point “One naturally thinks that a seven-inch screen would offer 70 percent of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a seven-inch screen is only 45 percent as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen. You heard me right: just 45 percent as large.”

As the various estimates are released / finalised we will update the table below (with links to the relevant posts):

As for the total market, if IDC’s preliminary estimates are confirmed and corroborated Apple will continue their incredible domination and unit shipments might just be in the 120 – 130 million range for the full year.