Kindle Fire sales roar, while Best Buy burns RIM

The Kindle Fire likely blew past analyst holiday sales estimates this Black Friday. While Forrester had dialed-back sales estimates to 3 million units, citing the Fire's somewhat-late Nov. 15 arrival date, Amazon announced today that the Fire was the best selling product across all of Amazon.com, as well as the best-selling tablet in Target stores (CP: Amazon Kindle Fire sales could smoke Apple's iPad debut).

As in the past, Amazon announced the news while demurring to offer exact numbers. Though it did say that sales were 400% greater than Black Friday 2010.

"Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we'd already sold millions of the new Kindle family," Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon Kindle said in the statement, referring to the $199 Kindle Fire, the $149 Kindle Touch 3G, the $99 Kindle Touch and the $79 Kindle.

Icing on its cake, Limp added that customers weren't just buying, but buying multiple Kindles, "one for themselves and others as gifts," he explained, adding that Amazon expects the trend to continue through Cyber Monday and beyond.

"We knew Kindle Fire and the new E Ink Kindles would be highly desirable gifts this holiday season," said Wendy Fritz, a senior vice president at Best Buy. "If this Black Friday was any indication, they are only getting hotter as we get into the shopping season."

Best Buy doesn't share the sentiment, however, toward Research In Motion's PlayBook, a tablet that has had a far more difficult time of taking any tablet market share from the reigning Apple iPad.

According to reports, on Saturday Best Buy cancelled some PlayBook orders that had been placed during the sale. On a Best Buy Holiday forum, customers report being told the product was backordered, and later that it was cancelled, as the store had "over extended itself."

Another person reports being told it was cancelled "due to fraud alert," and then a manager clarifying that reason was more likely stock availability.

The sale may have caused a rush of purchases, leaving Best Buy nervous that it was in an HP TouchPad situation. After announcing it was cancelling the TouchPad and slashing its price, the response was so strong that HP wound up having to build more of the tablets at a loss, just to honor all the orders that were placed.

A search for the device on the Best Buy site shows it to be "sold out online." Best Buy is also not selling the Fire online. A search for the Kindle Fire on the Best Buy site showed it to be available "in store only."