Amazon has 76% of ebook market, helped by iPad

[L.J. Sellers]

According to this LA Times article, Amazon has 76% of the ebook market, and the Kindle ap for the iPad is helping Amazon hang on to its market share, even with the huge growth in iPad sales. It says, "one in five people who buy digital books from the Kindle store don't own a Kindle device."

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/ente...et-survey.html

Analysts also predict that by 2015, Amazon will only have 51% of the ebook market, and Apple will have 16%.

It's an interesting article.
L.J.

[fjtorres]

What I find interesting is that with 100 million iPods and several zillion PCs out there, to say nothing of the PDAs and other smartphones, that Kindle (5-10 million, max, installed base) actually runs as high as 80% of the Amazon customer base and (if the 76% is to believed) 60% of *all* ebook buyers.
Doesn't seem to support the "multi-purpose device uber-alles" crowd, does it? Not when you consider that the majority of the 40% of the market not buying Kindles is buying Sonys, Nooks, Pocketbooks, Hanlins, Bookeens, etc...

It's early in the game, of course, but I'm thinking the multi-purpose device viewpoint is (for now) a lot of pundit sound and fury but little consumer cash-register action when it comes to ebooks.

Or maybe reading on iPxxx's whets the apetite for ebooks and greases to path to dedicated readers? Sure doesn't look like dedicated readers are going to vanish in a puff of smoke any time soon, either way.

[JSWolf]

Amazon doesn't release numbers. So any article quoting numbers for Amazon is based on guesswork.

[L.J. Sellers]

That's what other e-book readers have said. They read their first e-book on an iPad, liked the experience, then bought a dedicated e-reader. It will be interesting to see which other e-readers stay in the game.

And the data was based on a customer survey.
L.J.

[avantman42]

This bit doesn't make sense:

One in six digital book readers on iPad report using iBooks most, but Kindle follows closely with 31% who say they use it most often

One in six is about 17%, so a little over half the Kindle's 31%. I'd like to know what the writer actually intended to say.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

What I find interesting is that with 100 million iPods and several zillion PCs out there, to say nothing of the PDAs and other smartphones, that Kindle (5-10 million, max, installed base) actually runs as high as 80% of the Amazon customer base and (if the 76% is to believed) 60% of *all* ebook buyers.
Doesn't seem to support the "multi-purpose device uber-alles" crowd, does it?

The iPad is the first mainstream (first at all, other than laptop/tablet PCs?) multi purpose mobile device with a Kindle app and a screen large enough for most people to consider reading on it. The majority of those 1000 million iPods were pre the iPhone/Touch and have a screen of about 2 inches across, hardly ideal reading targets.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Amazon doesn't release numbers. So any article quoting numbers for Amazon is based on guesswork.

Try to look at the number of people active in "E books Readers" forum:
At the time of this writing there are 219 people viewing the Kindle section. Next in line is "Sony Readers" with 79 viewing. Next is "Apple Devices" with 48 viewers.
There are actually more Kindle viewers than all others combined. (A quick estimate)

[Ken Irving]

Originally Posted by avantman42

This bit doesn't make sense:

One in six is about 17%, so a little over half the Kindle's 31%. I'd like to know what the writer actually intended to say.

I'll bet his editor (if he has one) does too. This is a very confused story, in part because it's all about the imagined war between the Kindle and the iPad, and it pulls figures out of a report that is probably proprietary (i.e., you have to pay for it at corporate rates) and then as you pointed out gets the arithmetic wrong. Given that, the 76% mentioned for Amazon is close to what they've been claiming, and if you add that to the Apple figure in the story (5%), you've got 81%. B&N has been claiming 20%.

Of course that 101% kind of crowds out everyone else, but the _order_ of the market share you see reported in various places right now seems to be pretty consistent - Amazon, B&N, Apple, and "Everyone Else." And the estimate that Amazon's share will drop is also pretty common, but then if the ebook market itself keeps on growing, "a rising tide lifts all boats," even if some of them sit a little lower in the water than they'd like. I'm happy to see all of this competition, though, because both the booksellers and the device makers are falling all over themselves to make things better, faster, and cheaper. More books, better prices, and better ereaders. For the ereading customer, to mangle a phrase from Huey Long, it's "Every woman a queen, every man a king."

And I'm okay with that.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Try to look at the number of people active in "E books Readers" forum:
At the time of this writing there are 219 people viewing the Kindle section. Next in line is "Sony Readers" with 79 viewing. Next is "Apple Devices" with 48 viewers.
There are actually more Kindle viewers than all others combined. (A quick estimate)

Interesting, but still have to consider that the Kindle forum contains the free Amazon books thread. I visit the forum every day for that thread, even though I don't have a Kindle.
Apple users are probably more likely to be on a general iThings forum, of which books would be a small part. For Kindle/Sony/Nook/... books is all they do, so you are likely to see more of the userbase here.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Ken Irving

Of course that 101% kind of crowds out everyone else, but the _order_ of the market share you see reported in various places right now seems to be pretty consistent - Amazon, B&N, Apple, and "Everyone Else."

It may be that their survey allowed for multiple answers.
In the real word, owning a Kindle does not preclude owning an iPad or any other gadget.
Zero-sum games only exist in pundit-land.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Try to look at the number of people active in "E books Readers" forum:
At the time of this writing there are 219 people viewing the Kindle section. Next in line is "Sony Readers" with 79 viewing. Next is "Apple Devices" with 48 viewers.
There are actually more Kindle viewers than all others combined. (A quick estimate)

I noticed this trend since around the time the K3 release rumors got hot. The Kindle forum usually has 2-3 times as many viewers as the Sony forum. This was far from the case last year at this time. There are so many Kindle forums available on the web that it is very interesting to see MR pick up this much. I think lot of it has to do with the hacks. Most of the hack creators hang out here at MR.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Try to look at the number of people active in "E books Readers" forum:
At the time of this writing there are 219 people viewing the Kindle section. Next in line is "Sony Readers" with 79 viewing. Next is "Apple Devices" with 48 viewers.
There are actually more Kindle viewers than all others combined. (A quick estimate)

But we've had polls that show more Sony Reader users then Kindle users. So really, unless we have hard numbers, this article could be a pile of trash.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But we've had polls that show more Sony Reader users then Kindle users. So really, unless we have hard numbers, this article could be a pile of trash.

When was the last poll? Also, as I stated above, there are more places for Kindle owners to go (of which Mr is NOT the most popular), but for Sony owners MR is the main place to hang.

[SensualPoet]

I'd like to underscore the statistic, originally stated by Amazon in mid-July, that about 20% of all its ebook sales are to people without a Kindle. It means people are buying books and playing them on iPads, PCs, phones, translating them to ePbus and reading them on their Sony's, etc.

This "platform bleed" is exactly what Amazon wants. Lately, the 5 million Kindle figure for 2010 seems to have gelled as "fact" in which case I think we can comfortably say the universe of (working) Kindles is no more than about 7 million by year end. But where does that leave all the other players? I notice no one has stepped up to shout 1 million e-books by any author other than Amazon. So -- do they have 40% of the market? 60%? 76%? They maintain a dramatically out front lead, whichever number you land on.

[leebase]

How much market share was Apple supposed to get in six months? I read my kindle books on my iPad and iPhone, never have had a kindle. Apparently not many folks have discovered what a great reading platform their smart phones are.

I really do wish amazon wouldpunlish their sales numbers....all these articles are so much guessing. This article isn't even NEW guessing.

Lee