Will the Kindle Fire Light a Fire Under Android?

Since releasing its new Kindle Fire tablet last week, which is based on the Android mobile operating system, Amazon hasn't released official numbers for how many of the units it is selling, but there are some reports that the Kindle Fire could become one of the biggest selling Android hardware devices ever. The Cult of Android blog is running a screenshot that it claims is leaked from Amazon and shows that the units are selling "at an average rate of over 2,000 units per hour, or over 50,000 per day." If the sales numbers are correct, that would put the Kindle Fire on track to be a bigger seller than the iPad was fresh out of the gate. It goes to show that Amazon's big bet on open source is paying off.

Amazon's announcement of the Kindle Fire tablet, a $199, 7-inch color touchscreen Android tablet, emphasized its price relative to the iPad, browsing capabilities, and more, but didn't play up the open source aspects of the device. Not only is the Kindle Fire based on Android, but Amazon's new browser, Silk, is based on WebKit--a proven open source browsing engine. In essence, the guts of the Kindle Fire are open source.

"In the five days since Amazon put the Kindle Fire up on their official site, over 250,000 tablets have been preordered," reports Cult of Android. "If this level of consumer demand for the Kindle Fire continues, Amazon will have 2.5 million preorders for the device before it officially goes on sale on November 15th."

It is important to note that Amazon has not confirmed these numbers, but they are higher sales numbers than either the original iPad or the iPad 2 posted upon release.

As OStatic noted when the Kindle Fire arrived:

"Not long ago, if you mentioned Amazon is a big player in the open source arena, you would have drawn many furrowed eyebrows. But with its big bets on Android and Silk, Amazon is just that. It's hard to bet agains the company's Kindle bets, and the latest ones stand on the shoulders of open source."