According to this interview in the London Guardian, Neil Jones of Interead, claims that over a million Cool-ers have been sold worldwide:

Cool-er 'confident' it can beat Sony's e-reader sales in UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/09/interead-cooler-ereader-google-books

wow, a million already ??? that's quite impressive !! and overall excellent news ; a million cool-ers sold means a million people reading ebooks ! looks like the ebook game is really heating up at last. now if only we could have some sales figures from sony and amazon...

"Surpassed seven figures", eh? Color me a bit skeptical. Maybe they misplaced a decimal or something. After all, how many Cool-er users do we have around here? I realize this place isn't exactly a representative sample, but you'd figure we'd have more than a handful if the Cool-er were actually selling that briskly.

wow but I thought the company that makes eink screens doesn't have the capacity to produce so many screens yet

I must say that I find this a bit hard to believe, and was wondering whether a million Hanlin/Jinke clones might be more accurate.

There can't be a million sold. Cooler has been on the market only a few months, and screen production during that time is measured (at most) in hundred of thousands. And that's screens for all the manufacturers (Sony Amazon, Jinke, Netronix).

hm, so is cool-er confused ? are they talking about ebooks (files) rather than liseuses ? an astounding backlog of orders they'll never be able to fill ? i'm surprised by the number as well but large numbers are totally abstract to me so i really can't tell how unrealistic this is.

They're a bunch of liars.

They're a bunch of liars.

don't put the gloves on hadrien, tell us what you *really* think. ;)

You have to admit he seems to have them sussed though Zelda :-)

oh, i'm not being skeptical !

The header says
Interead sells 1m of its colourful Cool-er e-readers in its first months
but in the article he is quoted as saying
After a few months in the market, worldwide sales of the Cool-er (which costs £189 in the UK) have surpassed seven figures

Perhaps he has sold some 5300 readers worldwide (5300*189GBP=1,001,700 GBP) and there is some mix-up. I don't know. 5300 seems a feasible number.

After a few months in the market, worldwide sales of the Cool-er (which costs £189 in the UK) have surpassed seven figures, he says.
1000000 / 189 = 5 291
Nothing to write home about, methinks.

I've reported the story to the Guardian as inaccurate, and directed them to this thread. If anyone has any evidence of how many screens PVI is actually capable of producing, this would help to prove the inaccuracy.

There is no way the Cool-er has sold over 1,000,000 units. And not especially with the luke warm reviews we've read as well.

The header says

Interead sells 1m of its colourful Cool-er e-readers in its first months

but in the article he is quoted as saying

After a few months in the market, worldwide sales of the Cool-er (which costs £189 in the UK) have surpassed seven figures

Perhaps he has sold some 5300 readers worldwide (5300*189GBP=1,001,700 GBP) and there is some mix-up. I don't know. 5300 seems a feasible number.


This sounds like a feasible explanation of the error. Some journalists are not very numerate, it appears!
(Alternatively, the firms that make coloured devices are prone to exaggerated claims.)

I've reported the story to the Guardian as inaccurate, and directed them to this thread. If anyone has any evidence of how many screens PVI is actually capable of producing, this would help to prove the inaccuracy.
According to E-Ink (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56115), "millions" of units have been sold.

I believe it's just missing the red part:

British ebook-store Interead sells £1m of its colourful Cool-er e-readers in its first months

Even if it is talking about £1m worth of Cool-ers sold, that just shows the level of this guys arrogance. "We've sold over 5,000 readers, so we can easily overtake the company that's sold well over 100x that amount." Basically he's just trying to promote his company as much as possible with little regard to the facts, which wouldn't be known to a casual reader of the Guardian anyways. They'll see him talking about how he thinks his company can easily overtake Sony (who they have heard of) and they'll say "Oh, these guys are a big player in the ebook market." I'm not sure if even robertb would make the types of claims this guy is making.

Don't ascribe to malicious intent what can simply be explained by incompetence.

Niel Jones says to journo "Sales have reached the million mark", referring to turnover or profits.. Journo searches for a snappy headline and translates it to "We've sold a million units".

He has every right to promote his business however he chooses. You have every right to ignore it. His target market is the people who pick up paperbacks with their weekly shopping trip. If that's not you, it doesn't serve any purpose being a snob about it.

I am skeptical too of the number of a million units, as the Cool-er website has had the device backordered for a while now.

1 million in sales, as in money coming in, sounds much more accurate to me.

I think that the device has probably been selling relatively well, and eventually it could possibly take on Sony if its able to get distribution in physical stores. For those that aren't used to the idea of a ebook reader seeing on in person probably could push them in the direction of buying from them.

Amy

Maybe they're talking store orders, but not reporting sell-through? Does sound awfully high though!

Michael F Stewart
Author of 24 Bones, A Supernatural Thriller
Available on Kindle and Multiformat

i could easily believe 5000 units sold. in just few months for a niche product from a new company, that's still a pretty impressive, i'd say.

They're a bunch of liars.

+1

another marketing wonk and more lies...seems to be the normal way marketing wonks work.

:thumbsup:

Even if it is talking about £1m worth of Cool-ers sold, that just shows the level of this guys arrogance. "We've sold over 5,000 readers, so we can easily overtake the company that's sold well over 100x that amount." Basically he's just trying to promote his company as much as possible with little regard to the facts, which wouldn't be known to a casual reader of the Guardian anyways. They'll see him talking about how he thinks his company can easily overtake Sony (who they have heard of) and they'll say "Oh, these guys are a big player in the ebook market." I'm not sure if even robertb would make the types of claims this guy is making.

naw, he will just stick with statements like the competition is using a lower grade display or something similar and derogatory, of course we have already seen that from him here in the Cool-er Reader thread.

They're a bunch of liars.

You tell 'em! :)


Don

YES, MOst likely the 1 mil of sales, instead of 1 mil of number of devices. LOL

A million unit is a large chunk of the whole market. there simply isn't enough screens around for 1 million ebooks for just one brand.

Cool-er: a netronix clone is decent in specs poor in software reader, but ODM can't seem to produce enough of them ...
I ordered mine early in august and only got mine until early sept.

From industrial news i heard VPI is only starting to expend the Eink production line and won't expect to be up and running for another quarter (or more)!
taiwan panel Giant AUO brought another epaper maker, also looking to massively expend production next year.

The Guardian has now published a correction:

 The panel accompanying a financial news feature on ebook reading devices said that the worldwide sales of one – the Cool-er ebook – now exceeded seven figures. This was the turnover in revenue terms, not the number of units sold (New leaf, 10 September, page 29).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/sep/23/guardian-corrections-and-clarifications

well, thats 6000 units at best!
Which is around 700 units per colour
I am pretty sure demand exceed supply.
Lil wonder why they still on back order!
My bet was, Cooler and many other OEM readers will go back order until end of the year!

Don't ascribe to malicious intent what can simply be explained by incompetence.

Niel Jones says to journo "Sales have reached the million mark", referring to turnover or profits.. Journo searches for a snappy headline and translates it to "We've sold a million units".

In general, the UK media is rubbish. If you're expecting any kind of factual accuracy or understanding of the topic you're likely be disappointed. If a story seems unlikely, it's usually because the journalist screwed up when re-writing the press release they were given into the house style.

Therefore I blame this 100% on Niel Jones (whoever he is) for being too lazy to get the journo to give him a template + copy of the Guardian style guide so he could do a proper tailored press release ready to go straight into the paper.