The new Amazon Kindle Fire HD was released Friday, September 14th, 2012, almost 1 year after the release of the Kindle Fire, and two months after the release of Google’s Nexus 7. The Kindle Fire HD‘s price point of $199 is the same as the initial price of the original Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7.  If successful, this could reenergize the Kindle Fire line.

Chitika Insights conducted a study to determine how the Kindle Fire HD was performing relative the Kindle Fire and the Nexus 7. To quantify our latest study, we conducted a user agent analysis on hundreds of millions of ad impressions from September 14th to September 18th, 2012. Looking solely at impressions coming from both Kindle Fire devices and the Nexus 7, we were able to observe the growth of the Kindle Fire HD Web traffic since its release; depicted in the figure below:

After only 5 days the Kindle Fire HD represented 11% of all Kindle Fire Web usage. A strong indication that the Fire HD is doing well compared to the previous Kindle Fire. But when compared with the success of the Nexus 7, it is clear that the Kindle Fire HD has a lot of ground to make up.

The Kindle Fire HD will need to greatly outperform its predecessor if Amazon wants to beat Google’s initial success. Having largely the same hardware as the Nexus 7 puts pressure on Amazon’s Kindle Fire-specific services to make the difference for customers – features that include Whispersync, X-Ray for movies and books, and integration with Amazon Prime. But the Kindle Fire also includes ads unless users pay more – a feature which could turn some buyers off.

The Kindle Fire HD may be exhibiting high adoption rates, but it is not as strong the Nexus 7. Its growth rate will need to remain strong if it hopes to match Google’s flagship tablet.

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