Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, launched November 2011, has dominated the U.S. market for Android tablets in its first few months of release, according to a new report from market research firm comScore.
The Kindle Fire, which runs a heavily modified, Amazon-branded version of Google’s Android operating system, commanded 54.4 percent of the entirety of all Android tablets bought as of February, according to comsScore.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab family of Android tablets came in a distant second during the same time with 15.4 percent. In December 2011, shortly after the Kindle Fire was first introduced, the two device families were neck and neck, at 29.4 percent and 23.8 percent, respectively.
The news is unequivocally good for Amazon and bad for Google, as Amazon is essentially getting a free piggyback to sell digital content through its stores on Google’s investment in developing Android. Google is reportedly working on its own branded tablet for release later in 2012.
