Amazon fans order three Fires for every E Ink Kindle

Kindle buyers want the Fire, Amazon's new colour tablet, more than they want the online retailers revamped E Ink reader, buyer data suggests.

Online number cruncher eDataSource said late last week that 95,000 punters signed up for the Fire on the first day Amazon began noting expressions of interest.

The company tracks 800,000 punters' email inboxes, allowing it to estimate the overall number of Kindle Fire pre-orders in the US.

Ditto the Kindle Touch and the new Kindle - the old Kindle 3 has been renamed the Kindle Keyboard - which together generated 25,000 orders on the first day.

So for every E Ink Kindle ordered, more than three Fires were requested.

Whether that's the result of a considered purchase, and punters really do prefer tablets to e-book readers, or simply a flood of buyers after a cheap tablet, remains to be seen. Holiday season sales are going to be eagerly watched.

The Kindle Fire is only being made available in the US, as is the Kindle Touch.

So was the iPad, and in 2010 that generated 300,000 first-day sales, according to Apple. ®