Analyst: Amazon is likely losing $50 per Kindle Fire

Amazon's Fire is not a true competitor for the iPad, but Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster said "it is more competitive than we anticipated."

On the Fire's plus side he cites the Kindle's movie, music, and Web browsing capabilities. Munster expects Apple's share of the tablet market to fall from 90% today to 60% in 2012, and for the Android share to rise from less than 10% to about 30%. He writes, " Apple is ... monetizing the hardware upfront with a 30%+ gross margin on the iPad, whereas Amazon is likely losing about $50 per Kindle Fire." The Kindle Fire, he says, likely to be one of the first Android tablet to drive those share gains. He had previously estimated that Apple would sell 50 million iPads in calendar 2012, and he's sticking with that number, although he believes it may be "conservative."