Amazon's Kindle Fire accounts for a third of Android tablets on a global basis, even though it is available in only a handful of countries outside the United States.

These figures come from app analytics company Localytics, which bases its surveys on usage of apps with its analytics and in-app marketing solution installed. This obviously gives an advantage to devices that have been on the market for some time, which is why Google's Nexus 7 appears to be lagging despite its buoyant sales in the six months since its launch.

The finding that the United States accounts for 59% of the global Android tablet market, followed by Great Britain with 5% is a reflection of the fact that Localytics is a US-based company. However the findings are still of interest to Android developers.

The breakdown by tablet manufacturer relates only to the United States, but Localytics comments:

Outside of the United States, the Kindle Fire practically doesn’t exist – 89% of Amazon’s family of tablets live in America, with most of the rest in Great Britain. After those two, no other country has even one percent of worldwide Kindle Fires.

Localytics goes on to remind us that to date the Kindle Fire isn't even available in Canada, although at the recent launch event  of the Kindle Paperwhite in Canada, Amazon’s VP in charge of the Kindle noted that they are working hard to launch the Fire lineup worldwide which should provide a boost for Android developers.

The advice from Localytics on the basis of its research is:

Any Android developer with a focus on tablets should be distributing their apps in the Amazon App Store. The degree to which Amazon has dominated their most serious geographical market should speak to the future potential, and since Google Play is unavailable on the Kindle Fire family, adding Amazon’s App Store as a distribution channel is important.

From a general web point of view the statistics are very different. For example, I Programmer's own analytics show the Nexus 7 as the top Android tablet closely followed by the Galaxy Nexus with the Kindle Fire hardly registering at less than 0.1% of the Nexus 7 traffic. It could be that Kindle Fire users aren't programmers or it could be that Kindle Fire users don't browse the web but do use apps.