Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney just revised his Kindle Sales estimates and thinks the Kindle will sell 2 million units this year.
2 million Kindle sales in 2009?
Mark Mahaney thinks so. He increased his Kindle Sales Estimates for 2009 from 1.5 million to 2 million. He also -
- Upped his Amazon price target to $170 from $140 and raised EPS estimates.
- Wrote ’the Kindle is seeing greater than expected traction’.
- Thinks Amazon will get $1.6 billion in Kindle and e-book sales in 2010.
- Added this gem -
“The Kindle has definitively established itself as the iPod of the book world,”
It’s good to see that at least 1 of my predictions for 2009 is coming true (millions of Kindles sold, perhaps 3 million).
Sony and the Mad Hatter Tea Party eBook Summit
There’s this eBook Summit going on somewhere and lots of important people are meeting to decide what we ought to pay for books -
- Steve Haber, Sony Reader CEO of sorts, got accosted on why Sony gave up their lead to Amazon. From his answer it seems he’s still not privvy to the fact that $10 eBooks delivered in 60 seconds are a big deal.
- In fact he attacked the $9.99 price point of Kindle Books. Way to get readers on your side, Steve.
- The one smart thing he pointed out was that Publishers should cannibalize their business before someone else does. Great, great point.
- The other big development was that Hearst’s Skiff and other Publishers with strange notions don’t think $9.99 is sustainable and they want to supplement it with advertising revenue.
Scary and strange stuff.
- In my opinion, if you can’t manage to make a profit on $10 per eBook you really should contemplate switching careers.
- The fact that you’d entertain the notion of putting advertisements in books (which customers have already paid $10 for) is another sign you should find another career.
- The only reason Apple and Amazon get the benefit of the doubt for their patents is – those patents were filed to guard against Google.
Sony gets Newspapers
On the plus side Sony finally managed to get some newspapers on board for the Daily Edition. Wall Street Journal have the details –
- WSJ refers to the eReader market as embryonic. Guess so – it’s not like millions of eReaders are being sold.
- Wall Street Journal and New York Post are included.
- The Post’s daily edition is a Sony exclusive and launches in January.
- Sony will share the names of subscribers with newspapers.
- Prices are in the $10 to $15 range.
Rather interesting that they are all News Corp. newspapers.
Why are Publishers so scared of $9.99?
The Sony Reader CEO said the right thing – Their business is going to get destroyed if they don’t cannibalize it themselves.
- Readers aren’t going to go for ebook prices over $9.99.
- It’s very, very possible to create a model that’s profitable off of $9.99 ebooks.
- That model is obviously not going to be the model Publishers are used to.
- At some point Publishers will have to start using technology to deliver more value to customers.
Not sure why Publishers want to focus on forcing customers to pay more, delaying ebook releases, and fighting eReaders.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to adapt to the changing landscape?
Perhaps Publishers think they can just snap their fingers and make eBooks go away.
Filed under: news Tagged: | kindle sales estimates, kindle vs sony
What world do these people live in? The kindle is already marching toward obsolescence. They’re draconian DRM will be eclipsed by any of half a dozen hardware makers that provide better content delivery. Amazon will never see the dominance that this post mentiond, well, maybe in their dreams.
it should come as no surprise to anyone that sony doesnt “get it” when it comes to ebooks/ereaders. historically, sony has NEVER “got it” about ANYTHING. their only real successes in the past have been (i believe) not a product of market insight but sheer accident… and even a casual examination of how badly sony managed to waste (and eventually piss away) any market dominance it had from those few successes should bear that out. they dont “get” anything.
they dont get how to serve their customers, they dont get how to serve their partners, they dont get how to market their products, and in the rare cases they do achieve some success, they dont get HOW they got there and they definitely dont get HOW to stay successful or repeat that success. it is frankly baffling to me that sony is still in business, in any capacity or marketspace.
if youre in an industry sony participates in, i think its a pretty safe rule-of-thumb to do the opposite of whatever theyre doing.