Had the Kindle Fire not been for $199, it may have been facing a lot of criticism right now – after all it lacks quite some features that as a user I would have expected it to come with. It has no camera, no microphone, and the biggest shortcoming – no 3G capabilities. But at the price-point Amazon has offered it for, it is still a pumped up tablet high on steroids and that too at $300 less a price as the cheapest iPad2. It is the package that will make a difference – as evident from the numbers just discovered. The Kindle Fire has been pre-ordered at an average rate of 50,000 per day; taking the number of pre-orders up to quarter-million in the last five days.

If this rate was to remain constant, more than 2.5-million Kindle Fires would have been pre-ordered by enthusiastic users by November 15, which is the official release date for the device. If the rate remains constant, and Amazon sees a high percentage turnout and conversion in terms of deliveries and confirmed orders from users, it could very well outsell the iPad – and in the process beating the launch day sale numbers of any tablet so far. Apple had sold 300,000 iPads, including deliveries of pre-orders on the opening day (first day of sales), and all other tablet sales numbers have been far less to be even brought it for comparison.

I am not yet sure if the Kindle Fire is an iPad killer, even with the overwhelming pre-orders pouring in. After all, they are two products quite different from each other. The Kindle Fire, for a long time, will still be looked up predominantly as a “Kindle”, and not a tablet PC. It has a bookshelf interface, and with its small design, it will certainly be handy, but there will be users who would prefer to act up on the iPad which certainly does offer more features than Fire.

The Fire, however, will help accelerate the growth of the tablet market – which is estimated to grow exponentially (it is projected that in 2012 alone, more than 75-million tablets will be shipped globally), since the number of users opting for a handier second screen will increase exponentially as it becomes more affordable. So, if you are asking for the answer to the question whether Kindle Fire is what will kill the iPad, you will need to wait till after the sales start. But the numbers till now can help me safely say this for Fire – it will certainly not follow in the footsteps of its predecessor Android tablets.