In the recent holiday season, sales increased sharply for tablets of all kinds. While one in five U.S. tablets are an Apple iPad (or iPad Mini), other tablets -- especially Android models -- are gaining ground, largely because they tend to be more affordable. Here, one of the interesting surprises is the popularity of Amazon's Kindle Fire.

Currently the Kindle Fire (a tablet-style e-reader device that runs a highly modified version of the Android mobile operating system) comprises about 8% of the U.S. tablet market, according to post-holiday statistics from the Chitika mobile ad network. That's more than double the Kindle Fire's pre-holiday tablet market share.

More recently, Localytics (which delivers app analytics) said that the Kindle Fire comprises fully one third of all Android tablets in use in the U.S.

Web traffic and app use from the Kindle Fire is still relatively low. The device is designed mainly to be an e-reader and Amazon.com storefront. But it is precisely its e-reader focus that might make the Kindle Fire an intriguing target for long-format or multimedia offerings from community news or information publishers.

Users of the Kindle Fire may want to take a deeper dive into your content, if you present it in e-book form. Repackaging your content into e-book format -- and especially getting your e-books into the Kindle store -- could broaden your mobile market as well as your ability to serve and engage your community. And for Kindle Fire users, e-books are probably easier for them to access and use than most community websites. (The Kindle Fire's web browser is notoriously clunky.) Also, many tablets are wifi-only -- which means users generally like to have content that's available to them even when they're out of wifi range (such as when riding a bus).

This strategy also could broaden and deepen your reach among users of Amazon's Kindle e-reader app -- which is one of the most popular apps across all types of smartphones and tablets. And it supports offline reading. 

And of course, most e-book formats (include Kindle books) support clickable links, which will launch in a web browser. This is yet another way to strengthen engagement through your web presence.