Leaked Sales Report Shows Strong Amazon Tablet Orders

More than a month before Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) tablet officially goes on sale, the online retail giant is reportedly receiving sales orders that indicate the Kindle Fire may be one of the biggest tablet launches yet.

Amazon, having just unveiled the $199 Kindle Fire last week, has already racked up some 250,000 pre-orders of the tablet, according to a leaked sales report on the tech site Cult of Android.

That averages out to about 50,000 orders a day, or more than 2,000 units an hour.

If the retailer keeps up this level of demand, it may have some 2.5 million preorders for the device before it officially hits store shelves on Nov. 15.

To put this in perspective, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) sold roughly 2.5 million iPad 2 tablets in the first month of its launch, while Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) only managed to sell 250,000 BlackBerry tablets in its first 30 days.

The cheaper Amazon tablet may not have all the advanced features of the iPad 2, but the heightened consumer demand may indicate a niche in the market for lower-cost, less-advanced tablets.