Apple Not Worried About Kindle Fire Shipments (NewsFactor)

Though IHS iSuppli expects Amazon to ship 3.9 million Kindle Fire tablets during this year's fourth quarter, Apple remains confident that its position of strength in the tablet market will continue. According to the analysts at J.P. Morgan, Apple is "not too concerned about the low-priced entrants."

Last week, the financial firm's analysts slightly reduced their iPad unit sales estimates for the quarter currently under way. After a meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, they indicated that their earlier iPad trim might have been too cautious.

"We think that Apple is not seeing much pressure from lower-priced tablets, yet," wrote J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz in an investor note.

"If anything, we think that Apple views the Kindle Fire as a device that stands to bring incremental consumers to the tablet market, and here, these consumers could gravitate to more feature-rich experiences," Moskowitz added.

IHS likewise believes the Kindle Fire will help fuel the expansion of the tablet market overall. The research firm projects that tablet shipments will grow from 64.7 million units this year to reach 287.2 million units in 2015.

Appealing To Prosumers

The Kindle Fire's unique Amazon-centric user interface is what enables the online retail giant to sell the new tablet below the device's actual hardware cost. "Once these users are on the site, Amazon hopes to sell them all kinds of other goods, ranging from shoes to diapers," IHS analysts noted on Friday.

However, many prosumers and enterprise customers may find the Kindle Fire's sales-driven focus too limiting, though the platform is helped to some extent by the subset of Android apps that run on Amazon's new tablet. More than 50 percent of the media tablets in the hands of U.S. consumers today are being used for at least some work-related activities, according to Forrester Research.

Microsoft hopes to appeal to this particular group by releasing a new operating system that can run on media tablets as well as laptops and desktop PCs. When Windows 8 launches next year, however, "it's going to be very late to the party," noted Forrester Research Vice President J.P. Gownder.

"Microsoft has missed the peak of consumer desire for a product they haven't yet released," Gownder wrote in a blog.

According to Gownder, 46 percent of the U.S. consumers surveyed in the first quarter of this year wanted a tablet running a fully touch-capable version of Windows. By the third quarter, however, "Windows was no longer No. 1 in choice preference, and interest among consumers dropped to 25 percent," Gownder wrote.

A Formidable Ecosystem

Still, other analysts are not yet ready to dismiss Microsoft's potential to become a major tablet player. Even though Microsoft is coming from behind in building an app portfolio around a touch tablet, the Windows developer ecosystem is a formidable one, noted Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC.

"It is likely to get enormous traction on its Windows 8 tablets," Hilwa said. He bases his outlook on "the propensity of businesses to want to blend tablets and PCs in their employee bases due to the converged software architecture."

Though Research In Motion's PlayBook sales have been disappointing to date, the Blackberry-maker's huge base of enterprise smartphone users provide the company with an opportunity to turn things around.

"A better assessment of RIM's tablet strategy will have to wait until February or March of next year, which is when RIM has said that a software update for the PlayBook will be coming," Hilwa said. "It is not a clear if an updated device is also part of the equation, but we know that RIM is working on its next-generation OS strategy, which presumably unifies tablets and smartphone."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111206/bs_nf/81245

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