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.

Comments

You know its slashdot when it's..

[ForestGrump]

You know you're reading slashdot when the number given is 1,000 times off.

240,000 is not 240 million

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[antek9]

That's not M as in Million, it's M as in Mousand.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[acvh]

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.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[NemosomeN]

You are correct, $250M is 250,000, and 250M Kindles is 250,000,000. Find a bank that will let me earn interest on a Kindle, and I'll use MM to count them in millions.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Adambomb]

Latin. Its the roman numeral for 1000.

See milli.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[mcsqueak]

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).

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[sunderland56]

For anyone who has worked in banking in the US, M means thousand, and MM means million.

The target audience of slashdot is geeks - specifically, engineering/computer geeks. This audience uses K for thousand.

If you want to use M for thousand on bankerdot.org, sure, go for it.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Zouden]

Wouldn't it make sense to use K?

As a rule, Latin is used for numbers less than 1. Greek is used for numbers greater than 1.

1000 = kilo (greek)
1/1000 = milli (latin)

10 = deca (greek)
1/10 = deci (latin)

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Lehk228]

it's roman numerals, M is 1000

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Kyro]

Is that why the U.S. banking system went belly-up?

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Reverend528]

This audience uses K for thousand

No, we use K for 2**10, which is 1024, not 1000.

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[shellbeach]

That's not M as in Million, it's M as in Mousand.

Yeah, they should have used K as in Kousand ...

Re:You know its slashdot when it's..

[Jellybob]

And the of course there's the Bakers Kilobyte.

Re:uhhh

[Pikoro]

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.

Everything old is new again

[Wordplay]

Sales figures look much more exciting in roman numerals!

Re:Everything old is new again

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Is that what it's about? Who came up with the lousy idea of mixing modern and ancient number systems?

Re:uhhh

[bobdotorg]

No, No!

They sold 240 MegaKindles, each of which is one seventh the physical size of the Library of Congress.

one should come up with numbers that make sense

[frovingslosh]

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.

Re:one should come up with numbers that make sense

[Nyeerrmm]

Usually you can get blogs delivered automatically for about $1-2/month, or you can access them via the internet app for free, and its not too much more difficult if you set up google reader or something like that. Magazines like Time and Newsweek are $1.50/month.

Great Title

[EdIII]

When I read the 240M title I wondered where my Kindle was in the house and why I could not remember even buying it :)

Compromise on L

[EmbeddedJanitor]

240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons.

Re:Compromise on L

[Ungrounded Lightning]

240l of Kindles is approx 65 gallons

But you can only get that if they blend.

Re:Compromise on L

[SetupWeasel]

They always blend.

Doesn't seem like that many

[darjen]

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.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[dgatwood]

Put in perspective, if the numbers I'm seeing on websites about iPhone sales are correct, this puts the kindle somewhere on the order of 10-20 days worth of iPhone sales.... Yeah, not that great. Book reading on an existing device is useful and a lot of people will do it. Buying a special piece of hardware whose primary purpose is book reading... definitely a niche market, particularly when it costs about twice as much as an iPhone (carrier subsidized) that does so much more....

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[JakeD409]

The main advantage of the Kindle over the iPhone is actually the fact that it's not a phone; do you realize how high you jump when you're sitting in a quiet place deeply into a horror novel, and right at the scariest part, the damn thing RINGS at you?!

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[Free the Cowards]

Welcome to Slashdot, where if you can't be the absolute best at everything, you might as well not bother at all.

Re:Doesn't seem like that many

[LaughingCoder]

it tries to do too much with the whole EVDO data thing

Obviously you have had no experience with a Kindle. The EVDO is the "special sauce". I have owned one for 8 months and I love it. I use it every day. I am reading (buying) about 3 books a month (each book is about $6, best-sellers are more like $10, but I usually wait until they "age" a bit). Plus I shut off my newspaper ($30/month) and get it delivered to my Kindle instead ($10/month), so in the end my monthly outlay for reading materials is unchanged while I am essentially getting 3 books/month for free. So from that perspective, my $400 initial outlay (I was an early adopter before the price drop) will be paid for in 33 months. Anyhow, what makes this device really attractive to me is the (free) wireless. Being able to browse their book collection (which is substantial), download and read a few chapters (for free) anywhere, anytime, is extremely addicting. And being able to buy the book and be reading it in less than 30 seconds is a convenience I've grown to "need". In the morning when I turn it on, there is my newspaper - I don't have to boot the PC, connect the USB, do the "syncing" thing, it's just delivered automatically. Built in web-browsing for checking the occassional baseball score or my email is also a big plus. Yes, the hardware is a bit clunky (too many next page buttons - there is no place to hold the thing), and the industrial design looks like something from the 80s, but the battery lasts a good long time (many days if you turn off the wireless and just use it as a book) and the display is very easy on the eyes. Never having to tether to a computer is a really big deal for me - don't knock it until you've tried it.

Re:It sucks that "K" and "M" are so close together

[Larryish]

I knew who posted the story without looking.

mdawson?

Re:uhhh

[robbiedo]

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.

ugh

[bcrowell]

It's fine that a lot of people seem to like the thing. Reasons I'm not interested:

• $360 is way too much.
• DRM.
• The methods for importing PDF files sound like a hassle.
• The TOU say you can't sell or give away your books.
• There are only 145,000 books available. That sounds like a lot, but it's really not.

I can see how it could come in handy if you're on vacation and want to travel light, but IMO that's not nearly enough to overcome the negatives. I'll probably get an e-book reader in 2030 or something. There's no rush. First I want to see someone get it right.

Re:ugh

[Nyeerrmm]

I like your first statement. I must say, as a Kindle owner I perfectly understand your point of view. Here's the way I see it

1. The cost was fine for me, but I'm also a young guy with a decent job so I've got some disposable income.
3. PDF's can't transfer well because of the size of the screen... I do wish there were an easy way to read technical papers on it though, I dont see it until the E-ink comes down in price and improves durability though.
4. Again, I've got adequate money right now, if its a book I really like and would want to lend, I'm at the point now where I can give gifts or buy a copy to lend...
5. The selection is a little frustrating, but it also gives me a chance to find things I may not read otherwise. I just finished Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which I don't think I would have found otherwise, which would have been sad.

Now... for #2... I really wish they'd learn from the music guys. The simplicity of buying off the device itself makes it so that they shouldn't need DRM, and it being a smaller, generally more respectful market makes a difference as well; the small file size is the one difficulty. And of course the worst part is that unlike with music, theres no easy way to buy a book and rip it.

There are definitely some flaws, most notably the DRM issue, but since I still move around a lot and dont like having to carry boxes of books around, its great. Plus, I actually think its more comfortable to read than a book, since there are no awkward poses in bed trying to keep it open when your at the beginning or end of a paperback that simply does not want to stay open.

But saying all that, I can definitely see how its not for you or most people, and 240,000 seems pretty respectable.

Re:ugh

[symbolic]

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.

Re:ugh

[Dave Tucker Online]

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?

Re:Doesn't seem like that many... But

[jwiegley]

Buying a special piece of hardware whose primary purpose is book reading... definitely a niche market

Yeah, but... I've been on Holiday in London for the past month. I take the tube (when it's actually running) everywhere and I've got to say the US$700 I spent on my iRex iLiad and about US$100 worth of novels has been a godsend on the train. The batteries last all day, bright light only improves the readability and much more portable than a laptop.

It may be a niche market but it has potential. Unfortunately, the only way this potential is going to be achieved is if the corporate players get their collective heads out of their ass and standardize on one, decent, open, portable format.

They also have to port previous works into an electronic format. Try to find Robert Ludlum's books on mobipocket format. You can't, at least not the pre-death publications. Dale Brown? "Oh yeah, let's pick every other book to publish." What idiot does that. If I'm going paperless then I'm going paperless.

DRM is tolerable but there's no reason you can't have an open format that supports DRM.

The people that dreamed up these different formats have done such a poor job it's not funny. PDB don't support different typefaces. PDF's don't reflow. HTML isn't going to support DRM and you need to zip to capture multiple files. Kindle isn't compatible with anybody else, lit is closed. While I find mobipocket tolerable try accurately converting any of the others to mobipocket. They're all just a kludge. Concepts of "paragraph", "chapter", "lists" and "Table" all are meaningless in these formats and essential concepts for reflowable layout. Basically, a quick experience in trying to convert formats and you will quickly understand that the people who designed these "formats" know nothing about capturing and encoding information.

Until they get a clue eBooks are dead in the water. (And I like mine, that should tell you something.)

Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[DeathSquid]

Books are cheap in the U.S. and people have a lot of room to store them, so Kindle is definitely a niche product in its domestic market. However, in other countries books are expensive and often space is at a premium. Kindle offers huge advantages, and would be wildly successful in these markets.

How does Amazon respond to this market need? They refuse point blank to sell kindle devices or media to anyone outside North America.

Sure, whispernet is NA only. But a USB connection works just as well...

What sane company ignores its largest potential market? And when it does, the writing is on the wall. If I was a shareholder, I would be livid.

So the only question that remains is why Kindle is being set up for failure? Simple incompetence? Xenophobia? Or something more subtle?

Re:Amazon wants Kindle to fail?

[gilgongo]

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.

Re:uhhh

[base3]

With DRM/TPMs being legally protected now there's a big push in the copyright industry to move to protected digital forms. When content is surrounded by DRM/TPMs then they can remove fair use or anything that law makers provide.

I'm normally among the first to smell a Treacherous Computing/Digital Restrictions Management dystopia, but can't "e-paper" be photocopied or scanned? I'm picturing a solenoid or two and a short program that synchronizes the "next page" button with the "scan/copy" button here.

Re:uhhh

[SirGeek]

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.