Amazon Kindle Fire preorders reach 50K per day: report

The Amazon Kindle Fire, due out in November, is already selling extremely well, according to a new report.

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The Amazon Kindle Fire is introduced by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos at an event in New York. Kindle Fire preorders have been strong.

Earlier this week, eDataSource reported that the Kindle Fire, the long-awaited tablet from Amazon, had managed to rack up 95,000 pre-orders in the 24 hours after the gadget was first unveiled. Now comes news that Fire sales have ignited even further. According to Cult of Android, which says it obtained a screenshot from Amazon’s internal inventory management system, Amazon is selling an average of 2,000 Fire units per hour, or 50,000 units per day.

In other words, big numbers. "In the five days since Amazon put the Kindle Fire up on their official site, over 250,000 tablets have been preordered," writes John Brownee of Cult of Android. "If this level of consumer demand for the Kindle Fire continues, Amazon will have 2.5 million preorders for the device before it officially goes on sale on November 15th."

Caveats apply: Brownlee attributes the screenshot to an anonymous but "verified source within the Seattle based online retail giant," and Amazon has remained mum on exact sales figures. It's also worth noting that Carter Nicholas, CEO of eDataSource, has put the daily sales numbers at 20,000 units per day.

In a phone interview this week with Brooke Crothers of CNET, Nicholas puts the total number sold at 215,000 – 95,000 sold on the first day, plus six days of 20,000 unit sales. So how does the figures cited by Cult of Android and eDataSource stack up against those of the Apple iPad? Well, one estimate – never fully substantiated by Apple – put first-day preorders of the 2010 iPad at 120,000 units, which does outstrip the eDataSource forecast.

What really counts, of course, is the long-term sales. "Apple sold one million iPad 2 devices in the first weekend of sales and an estimated 2.4 million iPad 2s in the first month of sales," writes CNET's Crothers. "That said, the Kindle went up for preorder on September 28 and won't ship until November 15, so there's plenty of time to rack up some pretty impressive sales numbers before launch."

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