Was Amazon's Kindle Fire just a flash in the pan?

Sales of the Kindle e-readers have apparently also fallen off a cliff

Data: IDC

FORTUNE -- Thursday was bad-news day for Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle line of tablets and e-readers.

• IDC released first quarter tablet sales data that had Kindle Fire shipments falling from 4.8 million in the Christmas quarter to less than 750,000 units last quarter. "Kindle Fire Shipments Fizzle" was the headline on AllThingsD.
• E Ink Holdings, the sole supplier of black-and-white screens for Amazon's Kindle e-readers, reported that its "major customer" bought way too many e-ink screens in Q4 2011. As a result, it ordered "almost nothing" in Q1 2012.

"To put it short," wrote Paulo Santos Thursday in Seeking Alpha, "the Kindle eReader has dropped out of bed. It has fallen beyond the wildest dreams of Amazon.com's management."

"This is simply not a positive development," Santos concludes. "This is another development confirming the migration of e-reading from Amazon.com's controlled environment, to a larger set of devices. These devices run Apple's (AAPL) iOS or Google's (GOOG) Android.

"The Kindle Fire suffering the same fate so early ... means that Amazon.com's attempt to mitigate Apple and Google's dominance has already failed. This failure certainly doesn't seem to be priced in the market."

Posted in: Amazon, Apple, E Ink Holdings, e-readers, Google, IDC, International Data Corporation, iPad, Kindle, Kindle Fire, Tablets

• IDC: The iPhone is once again the world's No. 1 smartphone

  Regained the spot that it took from Nokia in June and gave up to Samsung in September

  It will come as no surprise to Apple (AAPL) watchers that the company sold 37 million iPhones last quarter. Tim Cook reported that number two weeks ago.

  Getting comparable figures from Apple's competitors is a different matter, and that's where companies like IDC come in. Samsung, for example, used to report only the number of mobile MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 7, 2012 4:53 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, BlackBerry, International Data Corporation, iPhone 4S, Mobile, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Windows Phone

• Gartner: Mac grew 20 times faster than the PC market in Q3

  IDC gives Apple an even bigger edge, with Mac's U.S. shipments outpacing PCs 80 to 1

  Tim Cook may not have seen the latest numbers. Or perhaps he's just more modest than Steve Jobs was. But he understated matters somewhat when he told the press last week that the Mac outgrew the PC market almost six times in the year ending in June and that it had outpaced its competitors every MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 13, 2011 7:25 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Gartner, IDC, International Data Corporation, iPad, Mac, PCs, Personal computer, Steve Jobs, Tim Cook

• PCs: Apple jumps to No. 3 in the U.S., even without the iPad

  Meanwhile, sales growth slowed worldwide as buyers shifted to smartphones and tablets

  The iPad was the elephant in the room as Gartner and IDC reported that worldwide PC sales in the second quarter of 2011 were even worse than their modest expectations.

  Shipments grew only 2.6% according to IDC and only 2.3% according to Gartner, well below the 6.7% Gartner had predicted and a fraction of the 12% IDC reported in Q1.

  Apple, MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 14, 2011 7:14 AM ET
  Posted in: Acer, Apple, Asus, Dell, Gartner, Hewlett-Packard, International Data Corporation, iPad, Personal computer

• What slowdown in tablet sales?

  A report from IDC sets off some pretty silly headlines in the tech press

  The top item on the closely-watched Techmeme news aggregator Saturday morning was a piece by ZDNet's Larry Dignan about how the shipments of tablet computers have failed to meet the industry's "lofty expectations."

  It was a theme picked up by at least eight other news outlets, including VentureBeat ("Tablet sales slow"), The Loop ("'media tablet' market isn't as MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 9, 2011 5:51 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Forbes, IDC, International Data Corporation, iPad, Tablets, Techmeme, The Loop, VentureBeat, ZDNet

• Gartner: iPhone Q1 sales were "remarkable," considering

  Despite higher prices, sales to end users worldwide more than doubled

  Gartner issued its "mobile devices" report for the first quarter of 2011, two weeks after rival IDC's.

  Here's what Gartner had to say about Apple (AAPL):

  Apple sold 16.9 million units to end users worldwide, more than doubling its sales of iPhones year-on-year. This market-beating growth came from all regions: the iPhone is now available in 90 countries from 186 CSPs [communications MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 19, 2011 11:21 AM ET
  Posted in: Android, Apple, Gartner, Google, HTC, Huawei, IDC, International Data Corporation, iOS, iPhone, Microsoft, Mtorola, Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, ZTE

• IDC: Apple is No. 2 in smartphones

  The iPhone could be headed for No. 1 this year as it overtakes RIM and gains on Nokia

  The lead that Nokia (NOK) and Research in Motion (RIMM) have enjoyed for years in the smartphone market is evaporating rapidly, according to a report issued Thursday by IDC.

  Their immediate problem is Apple (AAPL), which shipped 18.7 million iPhones in Q1 2011, more than double last year's shipments, to overtake RIM's BlackBerry and MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 6, 2011 7:39 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, BlackBerry, IDC, International Data Corporation, iPhone, Mobile, Nokia, Research in Motion, Windows Phone 7

• The triumph of 'good enough' computing

  The global PC market shrank 3.2% year over year in Q1 2011 as iPad sales surged

  It's a pity IDC doesn't include tablets in its quarterly surveys of computer shipments. If it did, the inflection point in the first quarter of 2011 would be even clearer.

  [UPDATE: Asymco's Horace Dediu has done us the favor of drawing an extraordinary graph that includes the iPad. It looks like a giraffe. Click here.]

  IDC had MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 13, 2011 8:03 PM ET
  Posted in: Acer, Apple, Asymco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Horace Dediu, IDC, International Data Corporation, iPad, PCs, Steve Jobs, Tablets, Toshiba

• iPad 1 earns 95% satisfaction rating

  In a February ChangeWave survey, 70% were "very satisfied" and 25% "somewhat satisfied"

  There were few surprises in the survey of 3,091 ChangeWave members polled just before the iPad 2 announcement.

  Interest in buying a tablet among ChangeWave's early adopter types was up, to 27% from 25% in November.
  Interest in buying an iPad was high -- with 82% preferring Apple's (AAPL) tablet to Motorola's (MOT) Xoom (4%), Research in Motion's (RIMM) MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Mar 10, 2011 1:44 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, ChangeWave, International Data Corporation, iPad, iPad 2, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung Group, Steve Jobs, Tablets

• Industry first: Smartphones pass PCs in sales

  International Data Corp is showing that in the final quarter of 2010, smartphones passed global PC shipments for the first time in history.

  As predicted a few months ago, Smartphones have passed PCs in global numbers.  Today's IDC numbers have Smartphones climbing to over 100 million units for the quarter with Nokia (NOK), RIM (RIMM) and Apple(AAPL) bringing in the majority of those unit shipments.  However, as you can see from MORE

  Seth Weintraub - Feb 7, 2011 3:01 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, HTC Corporation, International Data Corporation, Nokia, Research in Motion, smartphone