Early Sony Connect e-book sales to top $500,000 by end of October

[flumbo]

Originally Posted by TadW

According to the newsletter, they got the info from sources in the US sales (emphasis is mine):

According to our sources in the US sales of the Sony Reader got off to flying start with most retailers selling out within a few days. An initial batch of 10,000 units of the new reader was delivered to Sony US in September and these went on sale in around 750 shops across the US as well as via online outlets such as Amazon and of course Sony’s own online sales operation.

Yes. And those sources said 10,000 units had been shipped and that most of those have been sold. 10,000 units x $50 = $500,000 in ebook (software) sales. I'm not disputing reader hardware sales, but several of the earlier posters on the thread thought that the hardware sales were only $500,000. Just pointing out what the original article meant.

Sony is playing with accounting numbers and tracking each credit as a $50 ebook sale per unit. Looks good for the press. The real test will be to see what sales in connect are after all the credits are used up.

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Mediamania

And even if Sony does sell that many, it won't move the needle at Sony, given the battery recall disaster (costing them upwards of a half-billion dollars) and big delays in shipping PS3, which is far more important in the big scheme of Sony than our very nice little ebook device.

And then there is their Blu-ray player which got delayed again...

[NatCh]

@Mediamania: 10k units was their August production run, and they're supposed to have another 10k run right behind it. You're right that even 20k units won't move Sony's overall 'needle,' but the PRS-500 group's needle will be pegged out by such volume.

I haven't counted the outlets listed in the thread discussing them, so there might very well be only 35 of them that we know of around here, but some of the locations discussed were Borders, so at least some Borders have already received units (and sold them all), according to eyewitness reports from other MobileReaders.

I don't have any way to see where all they've shipped what, but the indications I have been able to dig up support the claim of ~750 outlets being in the right ballpark, at any rate.

The PRS-500 was listed for pre-order at Amazon for a day or so, before it was de-listed, so I wouldn't count them out completely on selling it quite yet. Sure, they have their own reader in the works, but we only know that by accident, and there's no indication that they're anywhere close to actually releasing it, so I just don't view that as iron-clad proof that they won't sell someone else's reader, at least in the meantime.

As for the rest, I certainly haven't done extensive research to find out exactly which locations have gotten and sold how many units. The chatter around here has suggested a fair number of locations getting multiple shipments of a dozen or so at a time, but I wouldn't consider even the (fairly high volume of) discussion here to be anywhere near a comprehensive accounting.

Largely my own conjecture and opinion, so salt to taste.