Amazon has just announced in a press release that the Kindle Fire, which it states is the best-selling product on Amazon since its launch, is "now sold out." In its nine-month market availability, Amazon says, it captured "22% of U.S. tablet sales" and that "10 of the top 10 best-selling items on Amazon since Kindle Fire launched are Kindle devices and content."

A few things are going on here. One of them is that Amazon wants the world to focus on its next bunch of Kindle tablets, due for a reveal in an event on September 6 [3].

But the press announcement is confusing.

According to recent stats [4], the Fire only achieved 54% of Android tablet sales in the U.S. in February of this year, and even if Android tablets as a market segment secured a 50% U.S. market share for the months before and after that, then grabbing 22% of the entire market would seem tricky for Amazon. Particularly since other research suggests Fire sales have tumbled in recent months [5], and that iPad sales have surged [6].

Amazon also says it's "sold out," which sounds very positive--until you wonder how many tablets it's actually sold. By point of comparison: If Apple "sold out" of the iPad, it would very likely have a greater than 70% share of the global market, but that would also reflect poor supply-chain management, and investors would worry it hadn't planned well enough for the market.

So is this clever PR, or bad PR, or simply a sign that Amazon is grabbing at whatever limelight it can before Apple reveals what many suspect will be its own cheap small-format tablet [7]?

We've asked Amazon to comment--and will update this post as soon as we hear from the company.

[Image: Flickr user kodomut [8]]

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