Amazon, known for its shyness about sales figures, made a bit of a splash today, announcing it had sold 1 million Kindles per week for the past three weeks. Sure, that isn’t much to go on, but it prompted some to wonder whether the No. 2 tablet maker is about to overtake the iPad.
The announcement mentioned only hard Kindle sales, which encompasses five different devices ranging in price from $79 to $379. How about the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s 7-inch tablet seen as the lone real candidate to challenge Apple? Well, CEO Jeff Bezos was his usual self, quoted saying only “we’ve already sold millions of units, and we’re building millions more to meet the high demand.” (Bezos says the Kindle Fire is the best-selling product that the internet giant hawks.)
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster expects Apple will sell 13.5 million iPads during this quarter, or around 964,000 tablets per week. Of course, we can’t know for certain how many iPads are sold each week, nor can we know if the majority of the 1 million per week Kindle sales is for the ereader or the tablet. Likewise, the average 964,000 iPads Apple could be selling each week might just as well be far above 1 million devices.
However, what is more certain is Amazon is using the Kindle is a most Apple-like way. That $79 Kindle does more than sell ebooks, but is an entrance to the entire Amazon ecosphere, ranging from digital music, storage and devices. The ereader eases the consumer into the buying experience, which then enforces the Amazon brand, which greases the skids for buying a Kindle Fire tablet.
All of which begs the question, has the Kindle become Amazon’s iPod?
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
8 responses to “Amazon Selling 1M Kindles A Week — But iPad Sales Still Lead”
Amazon has the netbook of tablets. It’s going to do well, but if they want to keep interest, it’s going to need some improvement. Otherwise, people will decide they’d rather shell out more money for a better experience.
I love how you guys post a bunch of articles about how we shouldn’t even compare the ipad2 and kindle fire (which I agree with), but then you post comparisons in sales like this.
as a solid apple user, i think it’s great the kindle fire is doing well, because it’s a cool way to read books and do a *little* bit extra. there’s no competition.
If Apple ever really develops this iPad feature, I would buy it–
http://digg.com/news/technolog…
I really like the last paragraph of your article. It’s exactly what is on peoples’ minds right now that are curious as to how this turns out. Amazon doesn’t strike me as a perfectionist company like Apple though, but I think they are more quality aware, than say, Acer, Dell, and Sony. With that said, I think if they keep aggressively pursuing an Amazon “ecosystem”, they might just get a loyal audience. However, there is still one giant advantage Apple has over Amazon, along with Samsung and other tablet/PC manufacturers; Apple has their own operating system. You can have an awesome mobile ecosystem experience, but at some point, for 99% of users, you’re going to want to integrate that with your desktop/laptop ecosystem. The desktop/laptop has always been the hub for media consumption. It has a larger HDD for storage, and it syncs with all your devices, but now Apple has iCloud for an almost complete automated synchronized cloud experience, which includes a desktop operating system of their own that they can tweak and modify themselves for an optimized experience. Amazon however does not have that advantage. At some point, they have to resort back to Windows, if they want to complete the experience. But this is just my point of view. I believe that the desktop should be included in the ecosystem as a hub.
Each blogger/writer has their own opinion. I wouldn’t want to come here if they were all suppose to write with an opinion that is in unison. I think it’s a quality and honest perspective.
okay, that’s fair, I honestly just haven’t heard many/anyone argue that it actually is a competitor.
Well, it’s hard to tell. You have to give hype time to wear off. I thought the Zune had a great chance of winning over the iPod, but that hype dyed down as well.
As an iPad work user and a Kindle Fire home user I might be the only one that doesn’t like the iPad…I love Apple and I throw stupid piles of money at them…but never for an iPad…I find it to big…this rumor of an “iPad mini” will be just what I’m looking for…my Fire is the perfect size…the iPad has the advantage of a more clear resolution but the Fire’s user interface is just as easy and fluid as the iOS interface…they are two different markets but do about that same things…I’ll stick with the Fire until there is a small iPad option