Amazon Kindle e-book downloads outsell paperbacks

[speedlever]

I have both an iPad and a K3. I have the iBook app as well as the Kindle, Kobo, Google Books, Borders, and Nook apps. I've only used the iBooks app to get the iPad user guide.

I use my K3 for reading. I use the iPad as a toy. I'm getting pretty good with Angry Birds.

But maybe that's just me.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

OK, OK, I give! I really intended the statement hyperbolically, but I guess my execution was off.

Let's say, "Yes, you can get azw in China -- if you've imported or carried over a North American Kindle and have established a Kindle account with a US-based credit card and can read English (I don't believe the Kindle currently supports Chinese fonts)." Those are still pretty big hurdles for the huddled Chinese e-reading masses to clear.

Is that acceptable?

--Nathanael

Hyperbole doesn't seem like a good fit if you're trying to make arguments about formats, sales and such. E-book sales figures are hazy enough, without muddling facts.

You don't need a Kindle to read or buy .azw content, just as you don't need a U.S.-based credit card (because you can buy with Amazon gift cert). Kindle also supports Chinese fonts, though the quality is debatable. (Kindle's Korean support has received lots of criticism as well.) You can read .azw on PCs and Macs, and with apps on iDevices, some BlackBerries and a wide range of Android devices. You can easily buy such hardware in China.

There are plenty of challenges to offering e-books in China, with widespread piracy, limited credit card use and infrastructure, and general distrust in buying online. Limited access to non-darknet books in Chinese is also a problem.

China is not the center of the universe, though, as you've tried to remind others about the U.S.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Your link is simply CNET regurgitating an Amazon press release. Now, I won't say press releases aren't credible but -- well, they're not credible. Most independent estimates I've seen placed Amazon's market share at around 60%.

Actually, press releases from publicly traded companies are very credible, as making material misstatements to the public is both a crime and one that the SEC prosecutes frequently. Of course you have to parse the language *very* carefully.

Amazon has stated that around 20% of their e-book sales are from people without Kindles. (The majority of whom are probably people with iDevices). Presumably that means 60% of the e-book buyers own kindles, and 20% are buying e-books on a Kindle app, give the 80% number.

iBooks isn't a format, it's an app. The iBooks format is epub.

Sorry, I should have said "epub format with Apple's fairplay DRM".

Second, I'm not really sure how much the ereader market matters. Another MR thread is currently discussing a CNET article which predicts that ereaders are a doomed technology, and CNET may be right. The explosion of the tablet market, and the migration of ereading capabilities to many multi-function devices, will certainly eat into dedicated ereader sales (iPad sales alone, according to the IDC report, are expected to be nearly triple the entire ereader market in 2011), as casual readers will have even less reason to drop money on a dedicated device. My own wife is chomping at the bit to get an iPad for reading; she finds my ereader useless. And once I move to a tablet, I may not keep my ereader around either. And I'm sure we're not the only ones. So it's not simply a matter of Amazon competing in the dedicated ereader market, but trying to establish .azw ubiquity across the entire technology industry.

I fear any discussion on epub vs azw that limits itself to the dedicated reader market may be missing the larger picture.

--Nathanael

I'm not buying the e-readers-are-doomed-argument yet. Many people own iPads and Kindles, for example, and a lot of people don't care to read novels on LCD screens.

Certainly the iPad has not meaningfully harmed Kindle sales yet, with Amazon selling as many Kindles in the first 70-odd days of 4Q of 2010 as they sold in 2009. But of course they will have lost *some* sales to tablets...but right now the data doesn't suggest that tablets are harming e-ink readers very much at all.

[Nathanael]

Dissecting press releases is an exercise in frustration, so I won't even bother. Amazon claims 80%; Apple claims 22%; B&N claims 20%; and Sony's in there somewhere, as well. Either someone is lying and getting away with it, or the SEC isn't bothering.

Bottom line is the Kindle is a very big fish swimming in a very small pond.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Amazon selling as many Kindles in the first 70-odd days of 4Q of 2010 as they sold in 2009.

Which, according to Businessweek, was 2.4 million. Looking back at the IDC study you referenced earlier, Apple is expected to sell in excess of 100 million iPads over the next two years. Steve Jobs could toss back 2.4 million Kindles with his breakfast marguerita and still have room left over for the olive.

As to whether tablets are impacting the ereader market, I won't even pretend to know, and, given that the iPad's been out less than a year, I think anyone who does is selling something. Nevertheless, I decided to crunch the IDC numbers just to see where they lead. Here's what I came up with (YMMV). Note the IDC numbers in your link didn't provide 2009 figures, so I inferred them from its Q3 2010 figure.

Worldwide ereader sales in millions:

2009 7.6
2010 10.8
2011 14.7
2012 16.6

That's a 42% Y/Y growth rate in 2010, 36% in 2011, and 13% in 2012. There certainly seems to be a significant slowdown, though, as I said, I won't even pretend to know whether its coincidence with the advent of the tablet really is just a coincidence.

In raw numbers, that's a hair under 50 million ereaders in 4 years, vs. 140 million tablets in less than 3. Giving half the ereader sales to Amazon (IDC estimates the Kindle at 42% of the 2010 market) and 75% of the tablets to Apple, then iPad has outsold Kindle better than 4-to-1 despite the Kindle's 15-month head start.

The rest of our discussion simply boils down to our disparate opinions about how significant an ereading platform the iPad will turn out to be.

Then again, I also stumbled across Nick Hampshire over at mediaIDEAS predicting the worldwide ereader market would hit 25 billion by 2020. Of course, that was before the iPad hit the market; wonder what he'd say now.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I'm not buying the e-readers-are-doomed-argument yet.

Nor am I preaching it (yet). The dedicated ereader will be around for a while yet, I suspect, though prices will have to keep dropping to keep them viable. They may well become a commodity item.

However, as a significant driver of ebook and ereading trends, I do think their best days will soon be behind them.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Certainly the iPad has not meaningfully harmed Kindle sales yet

I haven't been able to find anything significant on this; the closest I've been able to come is a widely reported ChangeWave survey (see Kindle Rapidly Losing Share To IPad), but that came out before Christmas, and was based on survey results rather than number crunching, and includes newspapers, magazines and blogs in its definition of ereading; however, it has some interesting charts.

There was also an even older rather generalized Garnter prediction that "media tablets"" would eat into e-reader sales, among other devices. That report had even rosier numbers for the tablet market than the IDC prediction (154 million in 2013).

But don't forget that Amazon is out to dominant the ebook, not the ereader, market. Once the iPad surpasses the Kindle as Amazon's primary delivery channel, it'll be interesting to watch Bezos' response.

Feel free to revisit this thread in a year to see how far off the mark I am.

--Nathanael

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I'm not buying the e-readers-are-doomed-argument yet. Many people own iPads and Kindles, for example, and a lot of people don't care to read novels on LCD screens.

iPad ain't an e-reader, and it has a LCD screen

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

iPad ain't an e-reader, and it has a LCD screen

Which is why many IPad owners also own Kindles. They are reading their novels on the e-ink screen of a Kindle.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Which is why many IPad owners also own Kindles. They are reading their novels on the e-ink screen of a Kindle.

Or maybe they were Kindle owners first, then decided they gotta have an iPad.

There is a question that needs to be asked. What is "ereading"? Magazines? Blogs? E-mail? Novels?

If we restrict our definitions to novels, there's no question the Kindle is the better ereading device. For most anything else (including novels in PDF format), I'd definitely reach for an iPad.

Originally Posted by GeoffC

iPad ain't an e-reader

If I'm ereading, then it's an ereader.

--Nathanael

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

If I'm ereading, then it's an ereader.

--Nathanael

The iPad is a tablet that has an e-book reader added as an app ...

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

The iPad is a tablet that has an e-book reader added as an app ...

You say tomaytoes....

I'm not sure I see the difference. The iPad is an ereader but, you say, it's not a dedicated ereader.

In any case, the whole question of whether a device is an ereader or a tablet-cum-ereader is, IMO, utterly irrelevant. The only important question for the future of ereading is where is most ereading being done? The answer to that is, increasingly, on non-dedicated devices.

If I can eread on an iPad then an iPad is, for any practical purpose, an ereader. That it's not a dedicated ereader is, IMO, not even interesting.

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Or maybe they were Kindle owners first, then decided they gotta have an iPad.

My point here, by the way, is that whether most dual Kindle/iPad owners were Kindlers who later bought an iPad, or whether they got their iPads, discovered they were deficient as an ereader, and so plunked down significant cash to supplement the iPad, is a rather important question. If the iPad is that deficient, that calls into question the viability of the iPad as an ereading platform. If, on the other hand, very few iPad owners feel the need to supplement it with a dedicated ereader, then the iPad is going to have a significant impact on the dedicated ereader market.

--Nathanael

--Nathanael

[GeoffC]

the iPad is more costly than, for instance, a kindle ....

[CleverClothe]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

You say tomaytoes....

I'm not sure I see the difference. The iPad is an ereader but, you say, it's not a dedicated ereader.

--Nathanael

I suppose a Prius is a home office then? A 747 is a hotel (beds, food, restrooms)?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

If, on the other hand, very few iPad owners feel the need to supplement it with a dedicated ereader, then the iPad is going to have a significant impact on the dedicated ereader market.

Or it means that those people didn't buy the ipad to read on and it will have little effect on the dedicated e-reader market.

Which seems to be what is happening now, as most people with an iPad *don't* read on it.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by CleverClothe

I suppose a Prius is a home office then?

If my Prius has everything I need to get my office work done while sitting in the driveway then an office it is, for sure. And if most people owned Priuses they would stop building dedicated office buildings.

And what 747 has a bed?

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Which seems to be what is happening now, as most people with an iPad *don't* read on it.

True, but why? Because the iPad is deficient, or because most iPad owners don't eread? Keep in mind that saying "most iPad owners don't eread" is not the same as saying "most ereading isn't done on iPads". Both can be equally true. If the iPad is "good enough" for most peoples' ereading needs, then every iPad sale means the potential Kindle market has shrunk by one.

--Nathanael

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

True, but why? Because the iPad is deficient, or because most iPad owners don't eread? Keep in mind that saying "most iPad owners don't eread" is not the same as saying "most ereading isn't done on iPads". Both can be equally true.
--Nathanael

Oh, I'm sure the reason is largely because most iPad readers don't read

If the iPad is "good enough" for most peoples' ereading needs, then every iPad sale means the potential Kindle market has shrunk by one.

Not necessarily. The iPad has to be "good enough" for those people who are in the market for a Kindle or other e-book reader, and not just good enough for most people.

Most people who read at all read 1-2 books a year. These people may be happy to read on their iPad (bought for other reasons), but would never have considered buying a dedicated e-reader. These people reading on the iPad will have no effect on Kindle sales.

E-books owners seem to concentrated in the 10-15% of the population who reads 10 or more books per year. It is when the iPad becomes "good enough" for those individuals that Kindles, etc. will start to lose sales.

However, presumably because they spend so much time reading, things like e-ink vs. LCD displays matter a lot to these users.

[Nathanael]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Oh, I'm sure the reason is largely because most iPad readers don't read....

Most people who read at all read 1-2 books a year. These people may be happy to read on their iPad (bought for other reasons), but would never have considered buying a dedicated e-reader. These people reading on the iPad will have no effect on Kindle sales.

Numbers say otherwise (see Apple iPad Torching Amazon’s Kindle; see also here): through November the iPad cut 15% off the Kindle's marketshare.76% of iPad owners read novels (plus far more newspapers and magazines than Kindlers), and of those considering an ereader, the iPad outpoints the Kindle 42 to 33%.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

E-books owners seem to concentrated in the 10-15% of the population who reads 10 or more books per year. It is when the iPad becomes "good enough" for those individuals that Kindles, etc. will start to lose sales.

If you define "e-book owners" as anyone who owns at least one e-book then again the numbers disagree with you. With 76% of iPad owners reading novels on their iPads, that's an awful lot of e-book ownership happening on non-dedicated devices. Yes, the iPad has already cut heavily into the Kindle market.

Now the ChangeWave survey came out in November, so it's a bit dated. I'd love to see updated numbers, but haven't found any. Have you?

And, by the way, once I make the switch to a tablet, I will probably shelve my ereader. While I prefer the eink screen for serious reading, I'm not at all discomfited by reading on an LCD, and I see no compelling reason to carry two devices. My wife, conversely, after spending time with my ereader, chose an iPad precisely because of the higher contrast an LCD display offers (and because she reads a lot of magazines). So that's two people dedicated ereaders have lost to tablets. And the ChangeWave survey suggests we're far from alone.

--Nathanael