Kindle Fire Dominates U.S. Android Tablet Market
Posted on Chris Poindexter | 2 Comments
The Kindle Fire dominates the Android tablet space in the U.S.
With all the buzz about Samsung’s Galaxy Note “phablet” it may come as a surprise to learn that the Kindle Fire still accounts for the single largest group of Android tablet users, that according to data from Localytics.
Nook is a distant second at 10 percent and, at present, the Samsung Galaxy family is running third with 9 percent.
The news is relevant to Android app developers who will want to put getting into the Amazon app store high on their ToDo list. Google Play is unavailable to Kindle Fire owners and the Fire doesn’t come with the usual suite of Android apps, which may leave some users missing their Google goodness. Google Play apps can be side-loaded onto a Kindle Fire but the apps don’t always work right.
The fact that Amazon has been able to carve out such a large niche for themselves in the Android tablet space without Google Play is pretty impressive in its own right, but the lack of coordination between app spaces in the Android universe means that Apple will continue to face only fragmented competition.
Chris Poindexter is a technology writer, photographer, and staff contributor to Digitizd. He has spent the last four years on the road writing two books on full-time RV living available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Besides technology, Chris writes about photography, personal finance, science, technology, and travel. He and his wife are currently living large on Florida's treasure coast.
Although I’ve loved my Kindle Fire ever since I loaded up the first issue of the Walking Dead comic on it, I’m also a bit surprised at how well it’s done in the tablet market without Google Play. I definitely prefer reading on my Kindle over games and t.v./movie streaming, so it’s never been a big concern of mine to be lacking Google Play, but I know I’m in the minority.
I had a chance to play around with my nephew’s Kindle Fire, and I did like what I saw. I just don’t know if it’s worth the purchase, because so many other products do the same things.