Now many wonder if the will be able to continue long into the future.
The latest in mobile commerce in terms of the devices that are leading the way, is that the number of retailers that are selling the Kindle Fire tablet in their bricks and mortar shops is beginning to wither.
This could prove detrimental to the holiday shopping season when buyers will be looking to mobile.
The most recent among several mass merchants to abandon the Kindle Fire tablet from Amazon, was Walmart. The reason for this trend is that retailers are increasingly seeing Amazon as a competitive threat to their own success. Therefore, they do not want to help to increase the e-retailer’s advantage by broadening the popularity of its primary mobile device.
Only a few months ago, Target made the same decision, hoping to stem the Amazon mobile commerce advantage.
Though Amazon has continued to lose massive amounts of its physical real estate for the sale of the device, many m-commerce experts are still saying that this may not actually cause too much damage to the ability of Kindle Fire to repeat the successes that it saw in 2011.
According to the director of Strategy Analytics, Peter King, “It is a battle of online versus bricks-and-mortar.” He said that the Kindle Fire was created by Amazon in order to become an electronic device version of a point of sale. Therefore, a consumer would be able to use the tablet for making m-commerce purchases, instead of having to visit a Walmart or Target store to buy the same item. Moreover, they were able to use that device in order to find greater options and lower prices than were available in the physical shops.
King also suspects that the retail margin is also a contributing factor to the withdraw of retailers from selling the Kindle Fire, as “I cannot imagine Amazon is being too generous given the small difference between cost and retail prices.” Equally, he felt that Amazon is likely unconcerned, as this allows the company to maintain greater control over the amount of money that it will earn for every unit’s sale, as well as over the sales themselves and the way in which these mobile commerce devices are marketed.
