The title of ‘Owner of the most ludicrous kindle prediction ever’ has just been stolen from me. In grand style.
In February of 2009, Imran Khan was predicting 500,000 Kindle sales in all of 2009 -
JPMorgan’s Imran Khan takes a more conservative view: He thinks Amazon will only sell about 500,000 Kindles this year. (At current prices, at least.)
Which makes his new prediction even more strange.
10 million kindle sales in next 12 months?
Yesterday, Mr. Khan changed his mind thanks to a survey (not necessarily the best reason). All Things Digital reports -
Khan’s survey found that 37 percent of respondents were familiar with the Kindle.
And of that group, five percent said they already owned one of the devices, and another 15 percent said they expect to buy one within the next year.
Extrapolating those results for the U.S. population, Khan figures that Kindle ownership will hit 10 million in the next 12 months.
Got to love Extrapolation. Well, Wikipedia says (my highlighting) -
In mathematics, extrapolation is the process of constructing new data points outside a discrete set of known data points. It is similar to the process of interpolation, which constructs new points between known points, but the results of extrapolations are often less meaningful, and are subject to greater uncertainty.
Extrapolating the 5% and 15% figures from the survey, it would also mean that Kindle sales are already at 2.5 million.
Charts and Graphs and Statistics
Here are some of the figures from the survey (courtesy AllThingsD and linked to them) -
10 million Kindles in the next 12 months. Of course, a survey said so!No surprise that price is the biggest blocking factor. Do note that 15% plan to buy Kindles even at current prices.
Also remarkable is that only 15% care about the proprietary format and none have it as their #1 reason for not getting a Kindle.
10 million Kindle sales in the next 12 months is super unlikely
Do we really think that out of the 40% of the US population that reads more than 1 book a year half are going to end up as Kindle owners in the next 12 months.
That would be a faster adoption curve than the iPod – highly unlikely given that the iPod’s 3rd generation saw an insanely high spike.
Amazon would have a to release a color Kindle 3 at $150 for that to happen. Rather unlikely.
The big sticking point for me is assuming this survey represents the general US population.
The survey also predicts that there are currently 2.5 million kindle owners.
That’s the data point that makes the survey seem really undependable.
Could we get some further details on the survey respondents, their demographics, where they live etc. – Are we sure this wasn’t a survey of Amazon employees?
Filed under: availability, kindle Tagged: | kindle sales estimates, kindle sales outlook
