Amazon Kindle Upgraded; '08 sales out-paced iPod's 1st year.

[Unspeaked]

Kindle 2.0 due next week.

Rumor is 500,000 of Kindle 1.0 sold last year, and projected sales of $1.2 billion in 2009.

Time to Crank Up the Kindle Rumor Mill: Amazon Press Conference Set for Feb. 9

by Peter Kafka

When will see a new version of the Kindle, Amazon’s much-talked-about e-book reader? Maybe in two weeks: The company will be holding an “important” press conference in New York on Monday, Feb. 9, it tells me.

Besides the where and when (10 a.m. at the Morgan Library in midtown), the company hasn’t provided any other details. But I’ll note that the last time Amazon held a New York press conference, in November 2007, it was to unveil Kindle 1.0. When CEO Jeff Bezos spoke to Walt Mossberg at All Things Digital in May 2008, he wouldn’t peg a time frame for a new Kindle iteration. But it seems reasonable to expect a new one more than a year after the launch of the initial version.

Citi Says Amazon Sold 500,000 Kindles Last Year; $1.2 Billion Business Next Year

by Peter Kafka

Amazon is set to unveil Kindle 2.0 next Monday at a New York press event. But how many of the original e-book readers has it sold already? Don’t ask Jeff Bezos and company — the Amazon folks delight in keeping most of the company opaque to the outside world.

But Mark Mahaney thinks he knows: The Citigroup analyst estimates that Amazon sold 500,000 devices last year. And he figures that the Kindle, which he delights in calling the “iPod of the Book World” will become a $1.2 billion business by 2010.

Watching Mahaney get to his numbers makes for interesting reading, if you enjoy reading analyst reports: He derives the 500,000 number via a filing by Amazon partner Sprint (S), which handles the wireless service for the e-books. And he gets to the $1.2 billion number by assuming that Kindle adoption will be similar to that of Apple’s music player several years ago, and that Kindle owners will buy a digital book each month.

UPDATE

Looks like the number for first year sales may be closer to 750,000. That would put it well ahead of initial iPod sales on its first year of launch (as the article referenced likes to point out for some strange reason, since they don't really do the same thing...).

Is Amazon's Kindle Outpacing Early iPod Sales?

When the Kindle sold out during the holidays, I guessed that Amazon would end the year selling 500,000 of its electronic books. All I did was roughly double the 240,000 that had sold through the middle of the summer. But now Citi analyst Mark Mahaney has come to the same conclusion, using better data.

In a note Wednesday, he cites some numbers in Sprint’s 10Q filings that indicate 210,000 devices were activated in the third quarter, and 100,000 each in the first and second quarters. (Each Kindle downloads books wirelessly using a built-in Sprint EVDO antenna). In addition to the 410,000 activated Kindles during teh first three quarters, he estimates that Amazon shipped a total of 500,000 activated Kindles before selling out in mid-November. (Oprah had something to do with that). If it hadn’t sold out, Mahaney thinks Amazon could have sold 750,000 Kindles in 2008.

But even the 500,000 estimate would mean that the Kindle is outpacing iPod unit sales in the iPod’s first full year on the market, when it sold only 378,000 units. That means if you turned back the clock and launched both at the same time, the Kindle would be outselling the iPod by 32 percent. Mahaney estimates that total revenues (devices plus electronic books sales) reached $153 million in 2008, but will grow nearly tenfold to $1.2 billion in 2010. That’s a steep ramp.

Good thing Amazon is getting ready ready to announce the second version of the Kindle on Monday. Below is Mahaney’s updated model.

 

[surferfromuk]

Yup, Apple need to be real careful with this.

Amazon Kindle is already leading the mindhsare in e-books.

I for one would love an iPod Touch with a 7" touchscreen to be an e-reader and everything else netbooky and iPod touchy...but it seems like Apple are gonna let this one slip by...

Apple need to watch out and get their own Kindle Killer to market before the word Kindle becomes synonymous with e-reader, e-books and so on...

I could see myself buying one of these things if they really get it right.

 

[Unspeaked]

And it's official.

LINK

Amazon unveils the new Kindle

At a press conference Monday morning in Manhattan, CEO Jeff Bezos introduced a thinner, lighter and faster version of the company’s surprisingly popular handheld electronic book reader. The price is the same — $359 — and it goes on sale today for delivery in 15 days.

The new device looks very much like the old one, with these improvements:

* Thinner: 0.36 inches thick, 25% thinner than an iPhone
* Quicker: Turns pages 20% faster
* Longer lasting: 25% increase in battery life
* Better display: 16 shades of gray (was 4)
* Bigger memory: Stores up to 1,500 books
* Bigger vocabulary: Built-in 250,000 dictionary
* Better control: With a 5-way navigation button
* Voiced: Able to read text aloud in a computer voice
* Less accident prone: The page-turn buttons are smaller and harder to hit by mistake
* More wired: New Whispersync technology

“We want the Kindle to disappear,” said Bezos before a packed audience in the basement of Manhattan’s Carnegie Library. “It’s designed so nothing interferes with that incredibly pleasurable mental flow-state you get into when you are reading a good book.”

Bestselling thriller author Steven King read from new a short story — “Ur” — that is available, for now, exclusively on the Kindle. “I’m the entertainment,” he quipped.

The original Kindle allowed users to download titles wirelessly from the Internet using a built-in 3G cellular modem.

The Kindle 2 goes one step further. The new Whispersync technology allows users to pause in their reading on, say, a Kindle 2, and pick up where they left off on a Kindle 1 and, eventually, on future wireless devices. Amazon did not say Monday what other wireless devices would be supported. Earlier reports suggested that the company’s electronic library of 230,000 books would be available on a variety of existing cell phones including Google’s Android phones and Apple’s iPhone.

Ian Freed, VP for Kindle, said the company was working “as quickly as possible” to make Whispersync available for a “variety of smartphones,” starting with the ones that give the best reading experience. He declined to give a timeframe.

Amazon has never released sales figures, nor would its spokesman confirm analyst estimates that has sold as many as 500,000 units of the first Kindle. The company had trouble keeping up with demand through much of 2008, especially after Oprah Winfrey endorsed the device on national television, calling it “my new favorite thing in the world.”

 

[Diatribe]

I am really tempted to get one. Looks pretty cool. Although I wish they'd get rid of the huge keyboard.

 

[NT1440]

Why all the references to apple and ipods?
The kindle isnt even the same market.

 

[Schtumple]

Yup, Apple need to be real careful with this.

Amazon Kindle is already leading the mindhsare in e-books.

I for one would love an iPod Touch with a 7" touchscreen to be an e-reader and everything else netbooky and iPod touchy...but it seems like Apple are gonna let this one slip by...

Apple need to watch out and get their own Kindle Killer to market before the word Kindle becomes synonymous with e-reader, e-books and so on...

I could see myself buying one of these things if they really get it right.

I really can't see how this can dig into apples sales, in any way, at all... It's a utterly unrelated device

I doubt apple releasing a 7" iPod touch would help matters, it would be hideously overpriced compared to the Kindle, so why bother, entering a market you have an overkill tech for doesn't make sense...

 

[seedster2]

I remember all of the loyalists saying the Kindle would never be relevant...

 

[NT1440]

I remember all of the loyalists saying the Kindle would never be relevant...

Its not relevant, not to apple any way. So those "loyalists" were right.

 

[queshy]

Why is it so expensive? There is little Kindle can do that a netbook can't.

A netbook is way more flexible, too.

And why isn't this on amazon.ca?

 

[iAlan]

While I am not in the market for a Kindle or similar device, I have seen one and it isn’t bad

Now, I don’t get the comparison to first year sales of Kindle versus first year sales for the iPod. It’s not that they are in different markets, or basically aren’t competing products - it’s that the ‘gadget’ market today is a much different place than it was when the iPod was launched - and I think a lot of the changes and uptake of various gadgets over the years are in fact due to the iPod. Can you imagine the Kindle selling anywhere near as many units as the iPod did 7-8 years ago if it were launched 7-8 years ago? I don’t. I think the iPod shifted peoples understanding, acceptance and willingness to incorporate gadgets into their daily life. I don’t think any other product has done this. Sure there were Palm and other devices, but I don’t know if these would have driven technology without the iPod to push innovation.

Anyway, just my 2 cents or whatever currency equivalent depending on where you are reading this (and factoring in pitiful exchange rates)

 

[seedster2]

Its not relevant, not to apple any way. So those "loyalists" were right.

I disagree. It was front page news then and it was all over the tech news today.

Many said it would be a flop and it isn't. E-book success is a likely future avenue for iTMS which seems to now sell everything under the sun.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

I want one of these things. More so because I'm a tech-geek, because I would likely never get my money's worth out of it vs. buying actual books. It only does one thing, but from what I've read and heard from numerous different places, it does it exceptionally well.

 

[NT1440]

I disagree. It was front page news then and it was all over the tech news today.

Many said it would be a flop and it isn't. E-book success is a likely future avenue for iTMS which seems to now sell everything under the sun.

I wasnt saying it wasnt a good device, but when you talk about "loyalists" then id assume you meant the kindle somehow had something to do with apple, otherwise their stance on apple is irrelevant.

Irrelevent, so technically they were right.

 

[Unspeaked]

Looks like this made it to the front page and my little ol' thread has been forgotten.



Early adoption strikes again...

 

[zap2]

If the Kindle only worked with Macs in its first year, maybe we could compare sales.


But comparing Kindle and first Windows/Mac OS iPod sales wouldn't be fair either, since clearly the iPod had more time to gain followers

 

[IJ Reilly]

We want the Kindle to disappear

He's probably not the only one.

 

[Unspeaked]

He's probably not the only one.