On the heels of the news that Target will soon be discontinuing its sales of Amazon Kindle devices in its stores comes more hurt for Amazon: Global shipments of its Kindle Fire tablet dropped by nearly 85 pecent in the first quarter of the year, down to 750,000 units shipped from 4.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, All Things D reports, citing a new survey by tracking firm IDC.
That decline also knocked Amazon from the number two tablet maker globally, previously holding a 16.8 percent market share, to number three with just 4 percent, supplanted by Samsung.
To be fair, it wasn’t just Amazon that had a bad quarter: All Android makers around the globe saw preciptous drops in shipments according to IDC. Apple shipped less iPads too, 11.8 million devices in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 15.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, but still gained market share, up to 68 percent of all tablets sold.
The news also dampens the momentum Amazon seemed to be gaining the U.S., with a report by another firm, comScore, finding that Amazon became the number one Android tablet seller in the country following its release in November 2011.
