Amazon's Kindle Blows Past Sales Expectations
It's time to officially retire the notion that Apple's magical iPad is capable of casting a death spell on Amazon's Kindle. We're not saying the iPad isn't popular -- because it is -- but any fears that it would spell doom for the eBook reader market, and Amazon's Kindle in particular, can now be put to rest, and here's why. According to reports, Amazon is on pace to sell more than 8 million Kindle eBook readers by the end of 2010.
That's more than double the number most analysts were predicting, and nearly a fourfold increase from the 2.4 million Kindles Amazon managed to unload in 2009, BusinessWeek says while citing an anonymous source "aware of the company's sales projections."
This all assumes those numbers are accurate, as Amazon has remained tight lipped when it comes to Kindle sales figures. However, the e-tailer couldn't help but brag that the Kindle 3 is its fastest-selling Kindle of all time, and that's saying something, even without figures to back it up.
None of this is particularly hard to believe. It certainly helps that a semi-recent price war broke out on the eReader battlefields, and for those looking primarily to read electronic books, it makes a lot more sense to invest as little as $139 in a Wi-Fi Kindle 3 than a $499 iPad or take a chance on one of the handful of other tablets sporting pre-3.0 releases of Android.
That's more than double the number most analysts were predicting, and nearly a fourfold increase from the 2.4 million Kindles Amazon managed to unload in 2009, BusinessWeek says while citing an anonymous source "aware of the company's sales projections."
This all assumes those numbers are accurate, as Amazon has remained tight lipped when it comes to Kindle sales figures. However, the e-tailer couldn't help but brag that the Kindle 3 is its fastest-selling Kindle of all time, and that's saying something, even without figures to back it up.
None of this is particularly hard to believe. It certainly helps that a semi-recent price war broke out on the eReader battlefields, and for those looking primarily to read electronic books, it makes a lot more sense to invest as little as $139 in a Wi-Fi Kindle 3 than a $499 iPad or take a chance on one of the handful of other tablets sporting pre-3.0 releases of Android.
