Quote:
Originally Posted by John F
I'm much less interested in the ratio of devices, and much more interested in the amount of ebook content consumed by device type.
Please try to steer the discussion in that direction. Thank you.  |
A few years back B&N reported on their user accounts (after their quarterly financials, when they announced they were getting out of tablets) and they said that something like 80% of their ebook sales were to people who owned ereaders.
1- Haven't found the report online so I'm going off memory there. Might be 75%. Might be higher.
2- That was B&N but Kobo has made similar reports.
3- Kindle may be different. There apps are broadly deployed and used.
Looking at hardware sales isn't going to be too illuminating because people use more than one device to read, buy on one device and read on another, or only buy/read ebooks occasionally/sporadically.
A more meaningful measure would be number of active accounts and even that can mislead because a fair amount of people buy from more than one walled garden.
Another approach is to work backwards, from the reported total number of ebook readers (around 25% of the US population) and the fraction of those reading enough ebooks a year to justify buying an ereader.
Or, you could look at the total number of ebooks sold and divide by 10, 20, or 30 to get a number of "avid reader equivalents".
No matter how you slice it, you get numbers in the tens of millions and not hundreds of millions. Or billions.
It's niche but a big one.