More than 250,000 Kindle Fires have been pre-ordered since Amazon announced the new tablet computer last Wednesday, according to a report from Cult of Android.
The blog says a "verified source" within Amazon provided screenshots of the company's internal inventory system. The screenshots show the Kindle Fire has been pre-ordered at an average rate of 50,000 units per day.
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If this rate were to remain constant, more than 2.5 million Kindle Fires would have been pre-ordered by the device's release date on Nov. 15 -- a number that dwarfs other tablets' launch-day sales numbers and leads Cult of Mac to suggest the "Kindle Fire could outsell the iPad."
Apple indeed sold just 300,000 iPads, including deliveries of pre-orders, on its first day of sales in the U.S. RIM has reportedly shipped just 490,000 Playbooks in its first quarter and a Motorola executive has called the new Xoom tablet's sales numbers "underwhelming."
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There are a couple of problems, however, with comparing sales of the Kindle Fire to other tablet computers. It has no camera, microphone or 3G capabilities. It runs Android, but its bookshelf-like interface departs drastically from other tablets. At $199, it's $300 cheaper than the cheapest iPad 2.
Despite the imperfect comparison, the pre-order numbers for the Kindle Fire do not confirm the device is the iPad's biggest threat. But a tablet doesn't have to be an iPad clone to be a threat.
At this time, one cannot conclude that Kindle Fire sales will outpace iPad sales because it's unlikely the number of pre-orders will remain consistent until launch.
A better conclusion from the sales screenshots, if they are indeed genuine, is that the Kindle Fire seems safe from repeating the flops many of its older Android siblings have demonstrated.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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