Pre-sales show Amazon has huge hit with Kindle Fire tablet

Oct 6, 2011, 11:26 GMT

San Francisco - Web retailer Amazon has a huge hit on its hands with its newly announced Kindle Fire tablet computer, according to a report Wednesday on the device's pre-sale orders.

Amazon announced the 199-dollar device last week and fielded more than 95,000 orders on its first day of sales, even though the device is not available till mid-November, according to research firm Edatasource.

It has since been selling an average of 50,000 Kindle Fires every day, or about 2,000 an hour, putting Amazon an a pace for 2.5 million orders by the time the device becomes available on November 15.

If the strong demand continues throughout the holiday season, the company could sell between 4 million-5 million units by the end of the year. That figure that will cement its status as a major challenger to the tablet computer dominance of Apple's iPad 2, which costs more than double the Kindle Fire but features a larger screen and faster processor among a host of more advanced features.