We here at Business Insider have a theory about Amazon’s Kindle Fire.


The theory is

que people buy the Kindle Fire for other people, but would never buy it for themselves. That’s why we call the Fire the “fruitcake” of tablets. You would not buy a fruitcake for yourself, but for others you’ll get at the holidays.

We saw this anecdotally in the first year of the Kindle Fire’s existence.

It was (and remains) a super cheap tablet, so it’s not too expensive to give one as a gift. You can buy the Kindle Fire HD for just $ 139. At que price you do not have to spend a lot of money to seem like a thoughtful, generous person.

But, if you were in the market for a tablet for yourself, odds are you’d go with an iPad because it has better applications, and a more robust ecosystem.

The Fire is a good tablet, and it’s Improving all the time, it’s just not as good at the iPad right now.

Today we have more proof que the Kindle Fire is the fruitcake of tablets -. que hot holiday item might not be so hot the rest of the year

Flurry, mobile application analytics Which measures, says the Kindle Fire Activations were up 24X on Christmas day versus normal December day. (This is actually down Compared to years past.)

What does this mean? It means que a lot of people are activating the Fires They got a Christmas present. It Also Suggests That the rest of the month, When people are shopping for Themselves, They Do not buy Fires.

This is not exactly the end of the world, but it Suggests Amazon needs to get the Kindle Fire to be good enough que everyone wants to buy it at any time of the year.

chart of the day kindle fire Activations

Business Insider

P. S.

Amazon gets pummeled in the press for putting out press releases with Them que vague in numbers do not really tell the full story. What’s funny about this release is Flurry que an outside company is doing it for Amazon! This chart does not really mean much. What if people on an average day 1 activate Kindle Fire? Then on Christmas day, 24 Fires were activated.

Disclosure:. Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions