ComScore: Amazon's Kindle Fire grabs 55% Android tablet share

Less than six months since its retail release, Amazon's Kindle Fire already controls more than half of the U.S. Android tablet market, according to new data issued by market research firm comScore.

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The Kindle Fire--priced at $199, compared to $499 for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) cheapest iPad--represents 54.4 percent of all Android-powered tablets nationwide as of February 2012, up from 29.4 percent last December, comScore reports. Samsung's Galaxy Tab device family is next at 15.4 percent, trailed by the Motorola (NYSE:MMI) Xoom (7 percent), Asus Transformer (6.3 percent) and Toshiba AT100 (5.7 percent).

The Kindle Fire was released on Nov. 15. The seven-inch tablet gives consumers a single, portable point of access to digital media initiatives including the Kindle e-book catalog, Amazon Appstore for Android, Amazon Instant Video and Amazon MP3, with all content backed up in the cloud. The Kindle Fire integrates with the Amazon Web Services platform and enables consumers to leverage free media offerings included within Amazon Prime, the $79 annual service that also offers unlimited two-day shipping on all products sold and processed by the digital commerce giant.

Although the Kindle Fire dominates Android device sales in the U.S., comScore reports that users consume significantly more content on larger devices like the iPad, which touts a 10-inch screen. Users on 10-inch tablets view 39 percent more browser pages than counterparts on seven-inch tablets and index 58 percent higher compared to five-inch tablet owners.

"Although many factors--such as demographics, content availability, connection speed and ease of portability--may influence consumption levels, the results of this analysis highlight important questions for the industry as the tablet space develops," comScore said. "With the emergence of a growing number of smaller-sized tablet devices, advertisers and publishers will need to understand whether these devices limit the opportunity for advertising compared to their larger-screen counterparts, or if they are able to build incremental reach and engagement by presenting different use cases."

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