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Source Claims 240K Kindles Sold
Naturalist writes "Exact data on (the Linux-powered) Kindle sales figures have been hard to come by. Amazon is notoriously tight-lipped about it, and although CEO Jeff Bezos did give some Kindle-related information back in July, the company has yet to break out how many readers it has sold to date. Now TechCrunch claims to have spoken to a source close to Amazon with direct knowledge of the company's sales figures. According to this unnamed source, Amazon has sold 240,000 Kindles to date, for an estimated hardware revenue between $86 million and $96 million; media sales would push the total above $100M." We've been following the Kindle since its launch nine months ago.
Now if only they could "kindle" some interest in the darned things and make the media format open we might have something to be excited about.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
for an estimated hardware revenue between $86 million and $96 million; media sales would push the total above $100M. What in the world is this saying? Lets take a figure lower than the midpoint and call the hardware sales $90 million (although one should be able to get it closer than within ten million dollars if you have the real number sold, since Amazon sells direct and the price is well known). That would only leave about $10 million or so for media sales. Are we really saying that people who shell out all of this money for the DRM encumbered Kindles are not spending more than about 12 percent of that price for stuff to read on it? Seems like a very expensive toy to buy if you're not going to actually use it, yet that's what the numbers here seem to be claiming.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If I was an investor in Amazon, I would be upset that they are not releasing any numbers. I would certainly no longer hold a position in them. It looks pretty small when you think about how many devices Apple and Nintendo are selling.
Bzzzt. For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million. It bugs me to this day when people write 240M when they mean 240 million.
M is also used in the advertising industry for thousands. For example, the cost of an ad buy can be given in thousands of impressions, known as CCM (cost per thousand).
It is open enough with support for the Mobipocket software. Easily create supported books. I just bought the Sony PRS-505 because of just released firmware supporting EPUB and Adobe DRM. Really like the Sony reader.
You forgot one - for a modern device in a culture that is bent on style, the kindle is quite hideous. iPhone, iPod, iMac, etc...though I'm not a big Apple fan (I do own an iPod), the style factor is why these things sell. The Kindle looks like it's still a prototype.
Is that what it's about? Who came up with the lousy idea of mixing modern and ancient number systems?
I have one too and I love it. The only negative is that if I use Calibre (the Linux software) I cannot use the Windows software (that comes with the ebook).
It isn't that important but having the ability to sync with my Vista Laptop and my Linux desktop would be nice.
UPS Sucks
In a way, I'm not sure you are wrong. It was my understanding that in order to display a PDF for example, it had to first be converted to their format.
Anybody know if this is true?
I'll take a guess that it's nothing to do with any of that. The name "Kindle" gives you a clue if you know anything about the historical relationship between publishers and distributors. Burning books. Basically, publishers hate (and I mean hate) distributors. Not only does distribution means high costs, it means massive restrictions on what publishers can publish. Poetry? Philosophy? Not a hope in hell: if it doesn't sell within a week, those tiny shelves need to be stacked with some crap that does. Lowest common denominator wins every time.
The kindle is ray of hope that publishers have been waiting for the past three hundred years: a way of getting stuff to their readers without the damn logjam that is distribution.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"