IDC is one of the monitoring companies that publishes quarterly estimates of shipments of tablets and ereaders from Asian manufacturers. Usually their updates don’t cause a big stir, but this time around their estimates for the first quarter of 2012 fit the narrative of the moment: supply of Amazon’s Kindle Fire dwindled sharply. After shipping an estimated 4.8 million units in the holiday quarter, IDC puts the first quarter Fire number at 700,000 units. To be fair, it was a light quarter for Barnes & Noble‘s tablets as well, reflecting a dropoff in the reader’s tablet market (and a corresponding […]
