STUDY: KINDLE FIRE SALES PLUMMET

John Paczkowski of All Things D, part of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, posted a column on Thursday illustrated by a drawing from the comic online greeting card company Someecards.com showing a child holding an electronic tablet on his knee. The caption reads: “The Kindle Fire is perfect for watching movie versions of books you no longer need to bother reading.” The problem for Amazon, which makes the Kindle Fire, is that it is not as “perfect” for watching movies and TV shows as Apple’s more expensive iPad, and for simply reading books, the cheaper black-and-white Kindle may outshine both color tablets since it can be read in bright sunshine, while the other two can not. The result, Paczkowski suggests, has been a precipitous decline in sales for the Kindle Fire. He cites a review by technology researchers IDC indicating that shipments of Kindle Fire tablets dropped to 750,000 units in the first quarter of this year versus 4.8 million in the previous quarter. The Kindle Fire now accounts for just over 4 percent of the global market share, according to IDC, versus the iPad, which grew its market share to 68 percent from 55 percent with sales of 11.8 million iPads in the first quarter.