Why Amazon Wants to Roll Out Update for Kindle Fire?

As more and more users begin to find that Amazon’s tablet-like e-book reader Kindle Fire is actually not a tablet computer at all, Amazon said on Monday that it will roll out a software update to improve performance.

According to a spokeswoman for the company, the update will be released in two weeks, mainly focusing on navigation enhancement and flexibility of carousels display.

The device received impossibly-high hopes as it was unveiled by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The highly awaited Amazon tablet computer was released in November and was touted as an iPad killer.

Kindle Fire sold amazingly fast in its debut month and has become the most successful product Amazon has ever launched. “We've already sold millions of units and we're building more to meet the strong demand, Amazon spokeswoman Kinsley Pearsall said on Monday.

Nevertheless, the early adopters were not happy and the excitement was short-lived as they found the device clunky. Complaints soon surfaced that the Web browser 'Silk' provided far from a smooth experience as it struggled to load pages and the touchscreen often refused to respond to touch. Some users also complained about the physical volume keys.

Another big disadvantage of Kindle Fire is user's lack of privacy. Currently, all the recent activity of users are displayed on the carousel, including Web browsing history, games played, books read, and videos watched.

It is surprising that despite all the complaints, Kindle Fire turned out to be Amazon's best-selling product. Perhaps, it has something to do with its price ($199)and Amazon's trusted brand name.

The device has an average rating of four stars on Amazon’s website with as many as 2292 customers giving it five stars.

As with all of our products, we continue to make them better for customers with regular software updates, Kinsley Pearsall added. All the update will be conducted over the air without synchronization. The update will make it easy for users to control what items can be displayed on the carousel.

Amazon is also expected to launch an upgraded version of Kindle Fire as early as spring next year. The move may quieten the chorus of critics of the original Kindle Fire.