Much has been said about Amazon’s Kindle Fire in the few short days since it was announced. Some believe it’s an iPad contender, while others say it’s nothing of the sort.

Regardless of which side of the fence you happen to be on, many agree that Amazon has a big seller on its hands going into the holiday season.

Strategy Analytics yesterday released a report that projects Amazon will sell 15 million of its new Kindle Fire tablets worldwide by the end of 2013. The forecast was derived using a proprietary choice-based consumer demand model and assumes that Amazon will add two further Fire models during the forecast period and that it will expand availability to Western Europe, Japan and other developed markets during 2012.

“Our first impression of the Amazon Kindle Fire is very positive,” wrote Peter King, director of tablet and touchscreen strategies for Strategy Analytics, in the report. “Amazon has avoided what most of the earlier iPad competitors failed to avoid; a direct comparison on size, features, price and user experience.”

Forrester Research senior analyst Sarah Rotman Epps concurs. Epps published an initial forecast back in August, prior to seeing the Fire, that pegged Amazon’s fourth-quarter Fire sales at 3 million to 5 million units, an estimate that depended heavily on competitive pricing.

Those kinds of numbers, which previous Android-based tablets have been unable to achieve, are certainly a reason for Google to smile, says King of Strategy Analytics.

“One company that will welcome the Fire is Google,” King wrote. “Amazon will likely sell such high volumes of the Fire that Google’s Android OS will benefit from the increased scale of apps developed with Android in mind in general, and Amazon specifically.”