Sales of the Kindle Fire are going better than expected. Find out what this means for the competition.

The Amazon Kindle started out as a simple e-reader device. It was meant for people who wanted to buy books like a sci-fi novels or romance books from the Kindle Store and read them on a convenient device. Before the Kindle Fire came out previous versions of the device could hardly compete with any tablet PC. The screen was monochrome and while a web browser was included, it was mostly meant for very simple tasks such as reading the news, checking the weather or reading your e-mail, hardly making it a multimedia device.

But then in November 2011 the Amazon Kindle Fire came out, a device that is more of a tablet PC than an eBook reader. When experts reviewed it they found that it lacked many of the features of other tablets such as the iPad. It also had a sometimes sluggish user interface; yet, sales of the Kindle Fire and buying intentions for the holidays seemed to be picking up.

A ChangeWave study done among consumers who intended to buy a tablet PC this season indicated that 65% of them were going to go with the Apple iPad, 22% were planning to get the Kindle Fire and only 4% were going to purchase the Samsung Galaxy Tab. According to the study, no other tablet scored even 1% when it came to consumer buying intentions.

According to some technology and marketing experts, the main reason behind the Kindle Fire's popularity is that it is a simple tablet device and it costs much less than the Apple iPad. Even though it lacks some of the iPad’s features like a camera and is relatively underpowered when compared to it, it would seem that there is still quite a large market for it. But it is still unlikely that the Kindle Fire will outperform the iPad in terms of sales anytime soon. According to analysts, there will always be Apple "fans", plus it is not likely that Amazon would want to build a tablet which will be as powerful as the iPad. Remember, the Kindle was mostly meant for reading and light use and is not aimed at "power users", such as IT professionals or graphic designers.

Still, the Kindle is a good money maker for Amazon and is well loved by people who like to download and read books on a simple device. Many users who read independently published novels available online, like some erotic books, enjoy the convenience of having a device that is light-weight, portable and easy to use. That way, they won't need to be constantly sitting in front of the PC when reading their favorite books.