The booming tablet market is splitting neatly. The iPad continues to dominate the high-price ground, but Amazon's Kindle Fire is wiping the floor in the lower-price range.
Apple has revealed it sold 15.43m iPads in the last quarter of 2011, an increase of 111% on the same quarter the year before.
And it's now estimated Amazon has shifted at least 6m Kindle Fires since its launch in mid-November. That's a shedload of slates.
And remember, the Fire is only on sale in the US at the moment. We expect it to launch in the UK and other countries sometime this year.
Apple continues to clean up in the top end of the market, and Amazon is cleaning up in the lower end. But it's probably not taking many sales away from Apple. It's creating a new market attracting customers who would probably never buy the iPad.
The Fire, which sells for $199 compared with the cheapest $499 iPad, is seeing off rivals from Blackberry, HP and all the other manufacturers who've tried to dip their toe in the liquid gold.
Amazon manages to do this because it sells the Fire at a loss and makes this up on Fire owners buying books and apps and renting TV shows and movies.
We should learn more when Amazon releases its latest earnings figures on Tuesday. But then again, we might not. Amazon rarely gives hard-and-fast figures. But be in no doubt, the Fire is a resounding success.
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