Google Has Lost Control of the Android Tablet Market

This story was originally published in Silicon Alley Insider. More bad news for Google and Android.

Amazon's Kindle Fire now has 54.4% of the Android tablet market in the U.S., according to comScore. This means Google has lost control of the Android tablet market to one of its newest mobile rivals after just a few months.

Amazon used the base layer of Android to build its own operating system. Google doesn't have its app store or any of its services on the Kindle Fire.

Amazon isn't the last company to do this. Phone makers are planning on forking Android, making it more fragmented and ultimately cutting Google out of the loop.

The success of the Kindle Fire is proof that you don't need Google to make a popular Android-based device.

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