Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Oooo, that's cold  |
Not. Really.
Official US literacy runs 95-97% but that includes a lot of social promotion.
More, ebook readers depend on people who read for entertainment more than once or twice a year.
This summer, ereader penetration was running at 15% of households with another 15% planning to buy this past holiday season. If two thirds of those actually bought readers, we should be at 25% penetration.
I doubt the US market for ereaders runs much bigger than 30%. For comparison, TV penetration runs 97% and PC penetration about 75%.
BTW, with the US holding about 120 Million households, 25 percent works out to 30 million households, 33% to 40 million. A good portion of those will be multiple reader households, so we're looking at a max installed base of something in the 50-60 million range, especially factoring in hand-me-downs.
Kindle sales for 2010 were generally estimated in the 14 million range and 2011 estimates ran from 16 to 22 depending on the source. Likewise, depending on the source, *North America* makes up 60-80% of the total eink reader market and Amazon sells half of the world total.
Anyway you slice it, eink readers are a *big* business and Amazon sells a honking lot of Kindles in and out of the US, with international sales due for big boosts out of continental europe, brazil, and whatever market they target next.
So any US sales flattening shouldn't have much of an impact on their bottom line, but the flattening isn't far away if its not here yet.