Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
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.
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I certainly don't see any problem with those projections but it's the market that's key. These things are aimed at the cellphone crowd. New, more capable models will appear constantly and they will rebuy every 2 to 3 years. The absolute numbers aren't critical, but the ability of the designers/manufacturers to come up with new is vital.
This where B&N has to worry and is probably really wanting out from under the development cycle. If they can offload the Nook like Chapters/Indigo did with the Kobo then they are golden. They can continue to market "FRESH, NEW, BETTER" and not have it drain the coffers dry for development.