There are some facts we know about Kindle Fire - Amazon's 7-inch Android tablet.

It launched big last holiday season, it's still only available in the US, and Amazon's never revealed any sales figures.

Nothing overtly has changed, but the news Kindle Fire is now officially "sold out" does demonstrate that everything is about to change.

Clear the shelves

Most obvious is the only reason Kindle Fire is sold out is because Amazon stopped manufacturing it a couple of months ago, and it's now sold all its remaining inventory.

Of course, the only reason for that decision is that the much rumoured sequel is due any day.

And given Amazon's just launched its Amazon Appstore for Android in the key European countries, it seems logical that the new Kindle Fire will also be available in those territories.

It's getting better

"We're grateful to the millions of customers who have made Kindle Fire the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO.

"Kindle Fire is sold out, but we have an exciting roadmap ahead. We will continue to offer our customers the best hardware, the best prices, the best customer service, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best content ecosystem."

The company also put a relative figure on the success of Kindle Fire, saying it had captured 22 percent of the US tablet market in the nine months since it launched.

To reverse engineer some absolute numbers, Apple has sold 44 million iPads globally during that period.

Assuming half were sold in the US, and generously throwing in a couple of million of non-iPad sales (giving a 25 million base), a reasonable guestimate would be that Kindle Fire has sold around 7 million units.

This would be much lower than some analysts have suggested.

The basic assumption in this case would be US tablet sales during that nine month period were 32 million. Of course, if this was higher, so would the number of Kindle Fires sold. 

[source: Amazon]