Report: Google, Not Apple Poses Biggest Threat to Amazon's Kindle Fire

Despite anticipated holiday sales numbers indicative of the iPad losing some traction to the upstart Amazon Kindle Fire, a new report indicates that the tablet landscape could look much different from its present form by the middle part of this year. And that could change who Amazon perceives to be its chief competitor.

According to the latest buzz engendered by Digitimes, Google's widely expected mid-2012 tablet offering will take square aim at the Kindle Fire's market segment - not the iPad's. Although, on the surface, it appears that all tablets are competitors, that isn't the case in today's market.

A primary reason the Kindle Fire proved so popular over the holidays is because of its lower price. While promising high-end functionality at a lower cost, the Kindle Fire is believed to have poached somewhere between 1 and 2 million iPad sales from Apple over the holiday quarter.


"Sources from Google's upstream supply chain believe that Google, instead of Apple, may actually be targeting Amazon's 7-inch Kindle Fire as its major competitor," Digitimes says.

If Google releases a tablet that looks like and is priced competitively with the Kindle Fire, Amazon and Google will then be left to duke it out among the shoppers looking for that which the lower-end tablet variety offers.

Source: Digitimes