The Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, which launched in the US nearly a month ago, has been given some pretty healthy sales forecasts for the coming months, meaning it could take up to half the Android tablet market share in 2012.

The reason for this assault on other Android tablets, to a great degree, can be put down to price as the Kindle Fire currently sells for just $199. This will get you a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 tablet with IPS Gorilla Glass display and a 1GHz TI OMAP dual-core processor. There's also 8GB of storage for your digital content on board.

This is dirt cheap, and means that Amazon actually takes a loss on every tablet it sells, be that only a couple of dollars. The way Amazon makes up for this shortfall is through its massive digital content library and marketing network, something which its competitors can't compete.

The forecasts come from Evercore Partners analyst Robert Cihra, who said that he believes Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets will make up 50 per cent of all Android tablets sold in 2012. No mean feet.

However, these sales don't seem to be encroaching too far into Apple's share as Cihra only had to adjust his initial first quarter 2012 estimate from $39.1 billion from $39.4 billion with 1 million fewer iPads being sold as a result.

Nevertheless, it's still a nibble out of Apple, and given the short life of the Kindle Fire is something other Android tablet manufactures will look on with a certain amount of envy.