Amazon Boosts Kindle Fire Production

Amazon Kindle Fire: Visual Tour

Kindle Fire is so hot that Amazon has ordered its suppliers to increase production of the tablet by as much as 1 million units in order to keep up with orders during the holiday season.

Amazon previously told suppliers to produce 4 million units, but that number has now increased, according to reports in Techcrunch and Digitimes. Amazon did not comment, and has not said how many preorders it has received so far for Kindle Fire, which was unveiled by CEO Jeff Bezos on Sept. 28 at a high-profile launch event in New York City.

eDataSource, which tracks consumer purchases, estimated that Amazon took 95,000 orders for Kindle Fire on the day it was announced. By comparison, Apple has said it received 300,000 orders for the iPad on its debut day.

[ How does the Fire measure up? Read Nook Vs. Fire: 5 Comparison Points. ]

The apparently surging demand for the $199 tablet does not appear to have impacted Amazon's expected ship date of Nov. 15. As of early Thursday, that remained in effect, according to the e-tailer's Web site.

Still, the company is warning that orders will have to be fulfilled "on a first come, first serve basis," indicating that not everyone who preorders a Kindle Fire will receive one on the first day of shipping.

Kindle Fire boasts some impressive specs for a device that comes in at under $200. The LCD screen displays 16 million colors in high-resolution, at 169 pixels per inch.

In-plane switching technology provides wide viewing angles. A dual-core processor, reportedly from Texas Instruments, provides quick responsiveness. The device weighs 14.6 ounces, making it possible for most people to hold in one hand.

Kindle Fire also provides out-of-the-box integration with Amazon subscription services for movies, TV shows, games and music. And it boasts a new browser called Silk that splits rendering tasks between the tablet and Amazon's big iron EC2 servers in the cloud. Amazon said the approach makes browsing faster than traditional approaches.

Amazon shares were up 0.66%, to $212.62, in early trading Thursday.