Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos during Amazon’s third-quarter earnings call told investors that his company is "building millions more" Kindle Fire tablets than originally planned as Kindle Fire is apparently exciting consumers, CNET reports.

The numbers did not live up to Wall Street's expectations, and Amazon's stock price took a big dive in after-hours trading.

"September 28th was the biggest order day ever for Kindle even bigger than previous holiday peak days," Bezos said, referring to the rush of orders that came immediately after Amazon announced four new Kindles, including the Fire priced at $199, less than half that of an iPad -and a new vanilla-color Kindle with the price slashed to $79.

"In the three weeks since launch, orders for electronic-ink Kindles are double the previous launch. And based on what we're seeing with Kindle Fire preorders, we're increasing capacity," said Jeff Bezos.

Amazon could ship as many as 5 million tablets in the fourth quarter of 2011. That's less than half the quarterly amount of iPads that Apple ships, but by some estimates, it is more than a million units higher than the total number of Android Honeycomb tablets currently in the hands of consumers.