New Android-based Kindle Fire

Amazon sells a million Kindles a week

Kindle e-book readers are apparently the hot gift this Christmas with Amazon reporting that the firm sold a million of the devices every week.

The world’s largest online retailer also said that the Kindle Fire remained the top selling product on Amazon.com since it was introduced 11 weeks ago.

Amazon famously doesn’t reveal sales figures but called the Kindle Fire "the most successful product we’ve ever launched." The firm’s previous e-ink based readers remain "close behind" the Kindle Fire in the firm’s bestseller rankings.

IHS iSuppli forecast that Amazon would sell nearly 4 million Kindle Fires this year. Another analyst said that the Kindle Fire would capture 50 per cent of the Android tablet market. That said, the Kindle Fire has not received universal praise with a fair amount of criticism regarding slugging performance and niggles with the controls.

Amazon has promised an over-the-air software update to improve matters. The Kindle Fire is based on a fork of Android Gingerbread, locked down to prevent device access. The software is also stripped of Google’s mobile services including the Android Marketplace and loaded up with Amazon’s own content delivery services such as the Amazon app store.

Amazon is also rumoured to have larger 8.9 and 10-inch versions of the Kindle Fire in the pipeline.

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