And so it begins. This will be remembered as the moment in time where ebooks took off. The Kindle Fire tablet is officially here. Amazon began shipping them today. They were not supposed to start shipping until tomorrow, but Amazon gave their customers an early Christmas present this year and started shipping a day early.
There is no doubt that the tablet is going to be a huge hit. Rumors are that Amazon had already pre-sold five million of the devices. Most likely they have sold more than that. And they will definitely sell millions more in the next month and a half of holiday shopping.
The $199 price point will make the Kindle Fire an extremely popular Christmas gift. Best guesses are that Amazon is losing a little bit of money on every Kindle Fire they sell. They are using the device as a loss leader to entice customers to make purchases from their site and to access all the other content on their site.
The Kindle Fire is going to change the game for ebooks. It’s such a good deal for a tablet that it is going to sell extremely well. Millions of people will now have extremely convenient access to Kindle books. This is going to make purchases of ebooks absolutely skyrocket.