05-13-2009, 12:21 AM | #196 |
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05-13-2009, 12:36 AM | #197 | ||
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05-13-2009, 05:42 AM | #198 | |
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05-13-2009, 01:08 PM | #199 |
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I think he's just saying that people (especially college students) aren't going to pay close to $500 for something that is ONLY a reader if Apple comes out with some tablet device that can display their text books, but also be a full featured web browser, play movies, have iPhone like apps etc. etc.
And I'd agree. In the mainstream I don't think dedicated readers will ever catch on. They'll stick around and sell to avid readers, but they just dont' appeal to the average joe who maybe reads a handful of books a year. So I think tablets will be the next big thing in the mainstream tech gadget market. People will have them like they have laptops today, and use them internet, videos, facebook and all kinds of stuff and maybe also buy the occasional book on them. Students will have them for their textbooks and all the other stuff. |
05-14-2009, 03:43 PM | #200 | |
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First, is that figure for sales units or dollars? More importantly, for those books that have a Kindle version, is that 35% of sales in electronic form related to sales of just among Kindle owners (no doubt even people with Kindles still buy in paper) or all sales of the title, across all buyers, regardless of Kindle ownership? I suspect your answer to that last will be 'I don't know'... which would be exactly the problem I have with all the Kindle hype. If the Kindle sold even a quarter as well as some people have speculated, then Amazon would be rightly acknowledged as the eBook king and they'd be crowing their sales figures from every rooftop. I strongly suspect that Amazon is cherry-picking its comments playing fast & loose with its statistics. |
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05-14-2009, 04:25 PM | #201 | ||
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Don't know. Units was sort-of the implication -- if a book had a Kindle version, 35% of all purchases were the Kindle version -- but it might have been dollars too. But if it were dollar amount, that would be even more impressive, since the Kindle versions are cheaper.
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I suspect you'll hear Amazon crowing their sales figures once they reach 1 million Kindles. So far they've only sold 700K - 900K. |
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05-14-2009, 04:58 PM | #202 | |
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05-15-2009, 02:23 PM | #203 | |
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You state that quite difinitively. What's the source on that?
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What's the source for that number? |
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05-15-2009, 02:40 PM | #204 |
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Jeff Beezos' original statement, reiterated by other Amazon employees.
Industry and financial analysts who determined this by looking at Amazon's financials. |
05-15-2009, 04:58 PM | #205 | ||
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Thanks for the quick response.
I hadn't realized that yours was the first reply after my first foray into the thread. Quote:
Like my common rebuttal to all the glowiness surrounding Amazon's non-statements about the popularity of the Kindle, if they were really finding that 35% of all sales for books that appear in both print and are not free-in-Kindle-and-counted-as-units-moved, then they'd be very likely crowing even more loudly than they do now. Quote:
I'm sorry, but I'm having a really tough time swallowing those figures. Recently I read an analysis (sorry, I forget where) based on how many panels the display manufacturer could turn out in a month (I think it was production capacity, not even units shipped) and glowingly extrapolated into the number of Kindle sales, despite the fact that everyone else with a 6-inch unit uses pretty much the same panel. That's a leap of logic I'm not prepared to rely upon. Honestly... how many other readers have been sold during the last few years? I feel certain that the WAGs being palmed off as 'sales figures' for Amazon would outpace everyone else's sales combined. Color me completely unconvinced. Even when Amazon does get around to releasing actual figures, the well has been so poisoned that I'm unlikely to believe it even then. |
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05-15-2009, 05:08 PM | #206 |
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Whatever the numbers it's pretty clear Amazon is going to win the dedicated eReader battle. They've already won what really counts--brand names. When you have average people calling other readers Kindles (like people ask for a Kleenex rather than a tissue many times) you've already won the largest part of the battle.
The only thing I see surpassing it would be if some multi-function table devices that do a lot of stuff other than read books explode in the mainstream. i.e. maybe the rumored Apple tablet device. But that would likely still use the Kindle store since they already have it on the iPhone/iPod Touch. So I'd be shocked if the Kindle didn't remain the most popular dedicated reader, and that the Kindle store didn't rule the eBook sales market like iTunes does MP3s. There will be other readers and stores around, just like there are other MP3 players and other stores which sell digital music. But Amazon is certainly poised to be the market leader. |
05-15-2009, 07:44 PM | #207 | ||||
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"We've added 45,000 books in the last three months. Kindle sales are now 35% of books where we have Kindle editions -- that's coincident with the launch of Kindle 2." Quote:
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As I suspected when I began writing this response. |
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05-15-2009, 11:21 PM | #208 | |
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05-15-2009, 11:39 PM | #209 | |||
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EDIT: I posted my answers without reading on down the thread, but nothing I read changes my answers. It is to Amazon's advantage to puff on these matters, so the way to read their statements is to assume that they are puffed. Last edited by Harmon; 05-15-2009 at 11:53 PM. |
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05-16-2009, 02:32 AM | #210 |
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Definitely. But battery tech improves every year, so it will get there.
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