How a Non-Tablet Changed the Tablet Market

Amazon’s Kindle Fire is so capable, so packed with features, and so cheap that no tablet but iPad can compete.

It’s an e-reader that was invented to help sell the public on e-books, whose components don’t have to be manufactured, printed or mailed but retail for close to the same price, vastly increasing profits to booksellers like Kindle developer Amazon.

The leading Android tablet is actually Amazon’s Kindle Fire — an e-book reader built up into a general-purpose tablet that became the main competitor to Apple’s dominant iPad immediately after the Kindle Fire was launched in November 2011.

Within three weeks after launch, the Fire had grabbed 14 percent of all tablet sales, compared to 57 percent for iPad, according to iSuppli Market Research.

By the end of February sales of Kindle Fire had grown to 54.4 percent of the Android market, up from 29 percent at the end of December, according to sales tracking analysts ComScore.