Amazon Kindle: ‘the iPod of the Book World’
A Citigroup analyst doubled his sales forecast for Amazon’s Kindle - an electronic book reading device - and caused shares to jump an additional 10% from their already increased value, MarketWatch writes.
Saying that Amazon could be “on track to sell as many as 380,000 units” this year - the same amount of iPods that sold in the first year on the market - Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney further predicted that Kindle-related revenue could represent as much as 4% of Amazon’s large revenue base, reaching $1 billion by 2010. (His previous estimate was 190,000 units in 2008, and revenue of $400-$750 million by 2010.)
However, the conclusion was based on fairly subjective data: the growth of eBook Lover reviews on Amazon.com, positive customer reviews, Kindle’s No. 1 ranking on Amazon’s current-best-seller lists, and a TechCrunch post on the “240,000 units sold,” a number that was not confirmed by the company.
Amazon has been quiet about the Kindle’s success as a product, having released little to no sales data since its release in November of last year.
Amazon has said only that the first run sold out in six hours, the title selection has jumped 67% since launch, and there is now a double-digit percent relation of Kindle-formatted books to total books sold on Amazon.com.