Amazon were once able to stand proud bragging that their Kindle Fire was "the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product", but never gave out any real sales numbers. This should've been a flashing red light in our faces, really.

Kindle Fire sales have been impressive, initially, but have reportedly started to die down. According to IDC's review of worldwide tablet shipments for Q1 2012, Kindle Fire shipments dropped from 4.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, to less than 750,000 units last quarter. Quite the drop, isn't it?

This represents a drop from 16.8-percent to "just over 4-percent" global market share, and is enough to cost Amazon its second-place in IDC's ranking of tablet vendors. Samsung have now replaced Amazon as #2, with Amazon taking the #3 position. Who's #1? Wow, surprisingly, Apple. But so they should be: the company shipped 11.8 million iPads in the first quarter, but this is down from the 15.4 million units in Q4 2011.

Apple now stake claim to 55-percent of the market, down from 68-percent in Q4 2011.