Quote:
Originally Posted by Ervserver
I would say 50k would be on the high end, just because they are out of stock now doesn't mean they are selling like hotcakes, maybe they only had a few thousand to sell, and/or Amazon is wanting us to think they are selling like hotcakes
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The reseller market on eBay might not be a bad indicator of Amazon's ability to get the Kindle out the door. I see 142 completed auctions (plus another 20 ongoing) since the evening of Nov. 29, which coincides with the first sightings posted here (
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16587). While some of these should not be considered legitimate (e.g., "presale" or those ended prematurely and relisted), they do give an upper bound. (Invalid items anyway balance out the handful of multiple quantity auctions.)
Now, one just needs to guess reseller demand. Considering the price premium for a new in box Kindle, the Wii might be a good proxy. eBay shows about 60,000 Wiis sold (I'm low-balling their number of US-only Wiis of 61,556) for a two week period starting Nov 29; their search engine goes no further. For the month of Nov, there were 981,000 Wiis
sold in the US. Of course, seasonality ruins any sort of linear approximation for a 2 week slice of that month of sales. However, it's reasonable to lower-bound things by assuming that those 60,000 Wiis came entirely from last month's sales of 981,000 => at least 6% of units go to the reseller market.
Taking all this into consideration, 162 Kindle auctions might suggest 2700-5400 (6% and 3% units going to resale) Kindles out in the wild since its release 3 weeks ago. With the Kindle eBaying for a 50-100% premium, I have a feeling that the 3-6% range might be a little low...