Sorry Samsung: Amazon Kindle Fire Now Rules Android Tablet Market

Released in Nov. 2011, Amazon's Kindle Fire Android-based tablet differentiated itself because it didn't run the stock version of Android. Instead Amazon used its own app store and UI, and it has now captured over half of the Android tablet market.

The news comes from comScore, who said the tablet has seen rapid adoption since its Nov. 2011 launch. Over the past two months, the Fire has almost doubled it share in the Android tablet market - it rose from 29.4 percent in Dec 2011 to 54.4 percent in Feb 2012. Samsung's Galaxy Tab family controlled a 15.4 percent market share by Feb. 2012, with the Motorola Xoom owning 7.0 percent. The hybrid Asus Transformer held 6.3 percent of the market.

comScore also said tablet adoption continues to rise in the United States, due to different prices and "feature preferences." It also said the range of screen sizes could be the biggest differentiator among tablets, from the five-inch Dell Streak to the 10-inch iPad.

Interestingly, comScore also found a larger screen size correlates with more page consumption. 10-inch tablets reached a 39-percent higher consumption rate than 7-inch tablets, and a 58-percent higher rate than five-inch tablets.

"Although many factors - such as demographics, content availability, connection speed and ease of portability - may influence consumption levels, the results of this analysis highlight important questions for the industry as the tablet space develops. With the emergence of a growing number of smaller-size tablet devices, advertisers and publishers will need to understand whether these devices limit the opportunity for advertising compared to their larger-screen counterparts, or if they are able to build incremental reach and engagement by presenting different use cases," the company said.

comScore also released the findings as Amazon released its Q1 earnings: revenue jumped 34 percent to $13.18 billion compared to last year, while earnings were down 35 percent - $130 million.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also claimed the Kindle Fire was the "bestselling e-reader in the world by far." The company revealed the Fire was Amazon's most-gifted and most-wished-for product across the company.

(reported by Jonathan Charles, edited by Dave Clark)