Jennifer Aniston Geeks Out, Let’s Revise Those Kindle Estimates Upward
One thing Citi analyst Kevin Mahaney didn’t know about earlier this week in his very optimistic sales estimates for the Kindle: Jenifer Aniston is apparently a fan. At least, that’s what it looks like in the picture above published by US Weekly (that is the first time and also the last time that publication will be mentioned here on TechCrunch, promise).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Amazon May Sell $750 Million In Kindles by 2010 (That’s A Lot Of Kindles)
The Kindle, Amazon’s ugly but useful ebook reader that launched in November 2007, may be a burgeoning hit, says Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney. Citi expects Amazon to generate between $400 million and $750 million in revenue from the Kindle by 2010, or 1% - 3% of Amazon’s total revenue.
The key points of differentiation with the Kindle and competing devices is the fact that books and other content is delivered to the Kindle wirelessly and that the Kindle has the largest book selection by a significant margin (more than 120,000 books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs, including 98 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers). Mahaney also points out that the Kindle has more memory than competitors, and supports newspapers, magazine and blog subscriptions. See Mahaney’s comparison chart below for additional details:
Mahaney points to slim public data about Kindle sales to date in making his predictions:
How Is Kindle Doing So Far In The Marketplace?
Our ability to answer this question is very limited. Amazon is the sole retailer of the Kindle and it has disclosed no information about its sales other than to say
that it sold out in the first 5 1â„2 hours. But we have pieced together four different clues to gain a sense of Kindle’s traction.First, we note that Kindle has consistently been ranked among Amazon’s Bestsellers in its Electronics category. Ahead of the Apple iPod Nano, the Garmin GPS Navigator, and the Canon Powershot Digital Camera.
Second, we note that the Kindle has received a very large number of customer reviews. Per the exhibit below, we note that Kindle has received more customer
reviews than any of the other Top 10 Bestselling items in Amazon’s Electronics category – 2,537 reviews as of May 12th – vs. 663 for the Apple iPod Nano 4
GB Silver (3G), the #2 Bestseller. This is in part an unfair comparison. Kindle is a new product sold only on Amazon.com, while there are numerous versions of the iPod, and they are sold by numerous retailers. But still, the volume of reviews does indicate material traction for the Kindle.Third, we see that the quality/tone of the customer reviews the Kindle is receiving is relatively positive. Below we compare the Star Rating Diffusion – 5 Stars vs. 4 Stars vs. 3 Stars etc… – for each of the Top 10 Bestselling Electronics Items on Amazon. What we see is that the Kindle actually receives fewer high scores than the other Bestsellers – 69% of its reviews are 4 or 5 Stars vs. an average of 80% for the other items. And it receives more low scores than the other Bestsellers – 22% of its reviews are 1 or 2 Stars vs. an average of 13% for the other Items. But for a Version 1 of a product “competing†against a several times iterated leading consumer electronics item like the iPod, a 69% Star 4 or 5 rating is relatively positive.
And fourth, we note that the most reviewed Customer Review of Kindle (“Why and how the Kindle changes everything†by Steve “eBook Lover†Gibson) has been reviewed by at least 27,000 people. Specifically, as of May 13th, 26,931 have read Steve Gibson’s review and actually commented on it by pressing the Yes or No button when asked if the review was helpful. And logically, there would be more people who read the review and didn’t bother to vote, although the voting step is hyper-easy. We believe that this helps provide something of a proxy for how many Kindles have likely been sold. We’d peg the number as somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 Kindles sold to date.
Citi took this indirect sales data and built a model based on the adoption curve of the iPod “Here’s what’s known. Launched in CQ4:01, the iPod went from 129,000 unit sales in its first quarter to becoming a mass market phenomenon, with a current installed base of approximately 100MM.”
They apply similar adoption rates to the Kindle that the iPod saw (starting at a much lower base: 129,000 iPods v. 10,000 - 30,000 Kindles in first three months on the market) and then discount the entire model by 50% - 75% to hedge risk in coming up with the three year revenue model. “So perhaps, if Amazon executes right with its Kindle product and marketing strategy, the iPod analogy for the Kindle won’t be too far stretched,” Mahaney says.
About half the projected revenue is from Kindle sales, half from book sales after purchase.
What’s our take? I was down on the Kindle when it first launched but quickly fell in tepid like with it once it was in my hands for a few weeks. But then John Biggs at CrunchGear borrowed it from me in January, apparently permanently. I’ve learned to live without it. The biggest issue I had with it, once I got the hang of it, was accidental page turns. I’m still buying a lot of normal books, but when I get my Kindle back I’ll happily switch back to the ebook world.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Amazon’s Kindle Knows Where You Are
Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader an has unpublicized feature: it can tell you where you are via Google Maps and mobile phone based location finding.
Discovered by Interface, the feature uses the Kindle’s built in CDMA mobile coverage to triangulate your location on Google Maps, delivering a similar experience to a GPS unit, complete with the ability to locate nearby gas stations and restaurants. Other hidden features in the Kindle include a hidden picture viewer, support for screenshots and even Minesweeper.
For those who have already purchased a Kindle, these hidden features are an added bonus, but are unlikely to create new demand for the device, after all it still doesn’t offer color and is a touch big to be mounted on a car dashboard for directions. GPS units have also come down a long way in the last two years, I purchased one as a gift for someone this year for $130; sure, it doesn’t read books but it looked prettier and I’m betting is easier to use.
(via Engadget)
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Sold Out Kindles Going For Up To $1,500 On Ebay
Amazon’s new Kindle ebook device sold out almost immediately after going on sale. And there won’t be any more available until after Christmas:
Kindle Availability
Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is sold out. Because orders are prioritized on a first-come, first-served basis, please ORDER NOW to reserve your place in line. Your Kindle will not arrive by December 24th. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.
The device, which sells for $400, also is unavailable outside of the U.S. So if you want one now, you have to go through eBay or another second hand retailer.
And it isn’t going to be cheap. Prices range up to $1,500 on eBay. The average final price is $830, and one person paid $1,500 (see Terapeak). So if you want one, you’re going to have to pay.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Stealing Books For The Kindle Is Trivially Easy
If you are willing to violate copyright laws, getting free ebooks is almost as easy as getting free music. There are numerous sites that have free, legal, out-of-copyright ebook files available for download. But tens of thousands of newly released books, including best sellers, are readily available on on BitTorrent sites as well, right next to movies and music.
And reading these books on the new Amazon Kindle is trivially easy.
Amazon ignored all of the ebook standards when building the Kindle, instead going with a proprietary format created by Mobipocket, a company they acquired in 2005. But most ebooks on BitTorrent come in one of four formats - .doc (Word), .txt, pdf or .Lit (Microsoft Reader format). The Kindle can read text and Word files in addition to its proprietary format. And PDF and .Lit files are easiy converted to .txt files. That means just about any book downloaded via BitTorrent can be read on the Kindle.
Getting it on the Kindle is easy, too. Every Kindle account has an email address. Send a file to that email address and it will appear on the kindle via Whispernet (Amazon charges a $0.10 fee). Alternatively, the USB cord can be used to move the files over without any fee.
To test this, I downloaded a few non-copyrighted files, converted them to text files and emailed them to my Kindle. Moments later they appeared on the home menu of my Kindle, where they could be read, annotated, bookmarked, etc., just like any book purchased on Amazon.
The Kindle is a breakthrough device, in many ways analogous to the first iPod. Just as the iPod brought MP3 players to the masses, the Kindle will be the device that introduces ebooks to many people.
And while Apple sells lots of songs legally on iTunes, the vast majority of content on most iPods comes from home-ripped CDs or was obtained in violation of copyright laws. I expect the same thing with the Kindle. Users may buy a book or two on Kindle, but many users will simply steal the content they want to read. Thanks to Amazon, that’s really easy to do on their slick new device.
Should users do this? No, and we do not encourage this. But will they? I think we all know the answer to that.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Kindle: Web Browsing Experience Is Horrible
I met up with Robert Scoble last night at an Orange party in San Francisco. He brought along his Amazon Kindle and let me and others test it out. It was the first time I’d held one - the Kindle I bought hasn’t arrived yet and my co-editor Erick covered the New York launch.
Anyway, he took video of me giving my opinion of the Kindle (thumbs down). The problem is the UI is completely non-intuitive and the screen is unreadable in medium light (it was much brighter in the room than the video suggests and it was easily bright enough to read a normal book). I was trying to simply pull up the browser and go to a web page and I couldn’t figure it out. I also compare it unfavorably to the etch-a-sketch.
I asked Robert to pull up a web browser and load TechCrunch. He did it once and it took so long I asked him if I could video it. He agreed, and did it again. It took him 55 seconds to pull up the browser and enter the TechCrunch URL. I then pulled out my iPhone and did the same thing in 14 seconds.
The Kindle can be given some slack since we browsing isn’t it’s core function. But web browsing on the iPhone isn’t the key feature of that device, either. Amazon just didn’t design a good device (the user interface, keyboard and screen are all very flawed), and they had all the time in the world to get it right. Hopefully v.2 will be an improvement.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Kindle Images And Video
I just bought the new Amazon Kindle. I figure if I’m going to continue to mock its appearance I should at least get an actual device in my hands. Amazon has the above overview video and images on the main product page. Much better than the original images that surfaced a while back. But I still argue it’s ugly as hell.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.