Goin' Mobile - Tablets Update

Some quick notes from the news/rumor world.

Amazon recently announced that the 2011 holiday season was the best ever for the Kindle family,  This December, Amazon sold over a million Kindles a week, making the Kindle Fire its best-selling product on Amazon's mobile website, followed by the Kindle Touch and the basic Kindle model.  The Kindle Fire was the top-selling, most-gifted, and most wished-for product available on Amazon.  Gifting of Kindle books was up 175 percent over the same period in 2010, and the number 1 and number 4 best selling Kindle books released in 2011 were both published independently using Kindle Direct Publishing.

In the business world, a report from Tne NPD Group's 3Q SMB Technology Monitor suggests that almost three-quarters of small and midsize businesses plan to purchase tablets, with the Apple iPad cited as the most considered. One question is whether they'll wait for the iPad 3.
 If so, they may well have a choice of models.  Rumors from supply-chain sources suggest Apple may unveil two iPad 3 models at the MacWorld/iWorld Expo later this month, while a lower-cost iPad 2 will be positioned to compete head-to-head with the Kindle Fire.  Speculation suggests the new iPads will have have higher-resolution screens and employ dual LED-light bars to provide greater brightness.

In the meantime, the iPad's larger competitors, the Motorola Zoom and HP TouchPad had weaker than expected sales in the last quarter of 2011.  Also, RIM has slashed prices for its recently introduced tablet, offering all three models for $299 through January, and announced a new OS release for February that will feature integrated email and other Blackberry features that users expected from RIM devices.

Meanwhile, the battle between the two leading tablet operating systems, Apple's iOS and Google's Android continued, even as both await the introduction of Microsoft's Windows 8 OS.   Analytics firm Flurry estimated that there were some 6.8 million iOS and Android device activations on Christmas day.  Flurry also reported that Apple's App store was on pace to exceed 10 billion downloads, a number the Android Market was also expected to reach by the start of this year.  Apple and Google are also battling in court, were Apple has accused Google of patent infringement in its Android OS.

It should all make 2012 an interesting year for the mobile and tablet markets, at least until SOPA enforcement crashes the Internet.  Let's hope sanity trumps content industry campaign contributions in Congress and they don't pass the proposed legislation.

Sources - Kindle Sales Top 4 Million in December: Amazon,  eWeek.com
Apple iPad Tablet of Choice for Small Businesses: NPD,  eWeek.com
RIM Cuts PlayBook Price as Tablet Battle 2012 Begins, CIO Insight
Apple's iOS, Android Battle Over Holidays: Flurry, eWeek.com