The Coming Kindle Boom: Sales Could Double in 2010
by Peter Kafka
Posted on October 7, 2009 at 7:00 AM PT
Amazon won’t even tell us how many Kindles it has actually sold, so projecting how many it’s going to move in the future makes for particularly tough fortune-telling. But that doesn’t stop anyone from trying. The latest stab: Forrester (FORR) thinks Jeff Bezos and company will move 600,000 newly discounted units this holiday season and sell 1.8 million by the end of 2009.
Overall, Forrester predicts, U.S. consumers will purchase three million e-readers by the end of this year. That’s a bump from the analyst shop’s earlier prediction of two million. It thinks Amazon (AMZN) will claim 60 percent of the market, with Sony (SNE) taking 35 percent and the rest going to also-rans like iRex.
Have to say, I find that one a bit head-scratching: I gather that Sony’s device is supposed to have created a footprint overseas, but while I see the occasional Kindle on the subway or an airplane, I have never, ever, ever seen a Sony reader in the wild. Have you?
For what it’s worth, Forrester figures e-reader sales will double, to six million next year, pushed by media buzz along with the introduction of new devices, including the Apple (AAPL) wondertablet that everyone is convinced will show up–someday. They may even be right.
