Kindle is the biggest selling item on Amazon, bests sliced bread
By Laura June 
posted November 30th 2009 9:41AM
posted November 30th 2009 9:41AM
Kindle Breaks Record for Sales in a Single Month During November
Kindle is the Hottest Gift This Holiday Season Across All Amazon Product Categories-Not Just Electronics
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 2009--
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that November is already the best sales month ever for Kindle, even before Cyber Monday. Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon. The latest generation Kindle – just released in October – is $259 and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle. "Kindle is a great gift for anyone who loves to read and it's flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "We're seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers."
Kindle is the revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. The latest generation Kindle with Global Wireless enables readers to wirelessly download content in over 100 countries and territories.
About Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc., seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront. Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Kindle devices are sold through Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Source: Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc.
Kindle is the Hottest Gift This Holiday Season Across All Amazon Product Categories-Not Just Electronics
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 30, 2009--
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that November is already the best sales month ever for Kindle, even before Cyber Monday. Kindle continues to be the most wished for, the most gifted, and the #1 bestselling product across all product categories on Amazon. The latest generation Kindle – just released in October – is $259 and available for immediate shipment today at www.amazon.com/kindle. "Kindle is a great gift for anyone who loves to read and it's flying off the shelves faster than any other product Amazon sells," said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "We're seeing lots of people buying from one to a handful of Kindles as gifts for friends or family, as well as many businesses and other organizations buying Kindles in large quantities for their employees or customers."
Kindle is the revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, magazines, newspapers and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution 6-inch electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle utilizes the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. The latest generation Kindle with Global Wireless enables readers to wirelessly download content in over 100 countries and territories.
About Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc., seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront. Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.amazon.cn. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Kindle devices are sold through Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Source: Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc.
Or does ot mean that for items other than the kindle people are going somewhere else to buy?
I doubt it.
@sycamore714
I don't get why this is getting voted down, it makes quite a bit of sense. Kindle is exclusively sold on Amazon, so any sale will go through them. On ANYTHING else in the store, such as the Zunes or iPods, there are a multitude of places to purchase them. This leaves people shopping around as opposed to channeling all of their sales into one place, making Amazons success look to be more than it actually is.
@Novieu
For that idea to make logical sense there would need to be a reason why shoppers would suddenly turn away from Amazon in droves in every area except the Kindle. No, when you think about it, it really doesn't make a lot of sense.
@(Unverified) They don't have to turn away from Amazon. Believe it or not, Amazon is not the only place to buy products. Some of the things people buy at Amazon are also available at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Barnes and Noble, Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Home Depot, K-Mart, Sears, Buy.com, Newegg, Abt, Dell, HP, Target, etc. Amazon is, however, the ONLY place to buy a Kindle. So, unlike every other product they sell, Kindle sales aren't spread all over the place.
@sycamore714 Sure, in theory. Except Amazon just had a blow out quarter (Net profits rose from $118 million in the year ago quarter to $199 million this quarter). Since the best estimates are that Amazon makes at most 5% of their money from the Kindle, your theory that their sales of everything else are falling off doesn't hold water. Also there are actual numbers out there for Kindle sales. You just have to look for them. And no, they're not going down.
@Carld
I'm not saying that they turned away, I am simply stating that all buyers are using Amazon for the Kindle, while only a percentage of buyers are using it for other products.
For example: Sally sells bananas and oranges, while Jill, Steve, Paul and Jenny sell just oranges. Sally sells 14 bananas and 6 oranges, while all of the rest sell 6 oranges each. Though one could look at the data and say that Sally selling 14 bananas and only 6 oranges shows that banana's are superior, in all actuality, there were 30 oranges sold and only 14 bananas sold. The only reason it appeared that way to Sally is because she's the only one selling bananas, where everyone is selling oranges.
@tylersmyler Me too.
Hmm, PR about a product from the company that makes it... I don't believe it for a second that the Kindle is that popular on Amazon...
yeah I have a hard time buying this too, I'd buy they had a sales jump after the price drop but until the thing hits about 159 I seriously doubt that it's going to be their biggest selling item. This reminds me of when the thing first came out and they posted the not on the front page about how they sold so well that they were completely sold out with in a very short time. What they didn't bother to say was that they didn't have that many at launch time to start with.
@(Unverified) It isn't just a press release. They made the same statements on their analyst call. They said the Kindle is both their UNIT SALES leader and their TOTAL DOLLAR SALES leader. Since its ILLEGAL to lie about stuff like that I'd say its more likely they're telling the truth.
Now, we're still only talking maybe 2.7M Kindles sold in 2010. Apple for example sold some 50 Million iPods last year. So we're not talking crazy saturation level numbers at this point. Still, they're making serious bank on the thing. Probably unlikely sales will tail off any time soon either, even given the coming competition, given how early we are in the curve still.
If the Kindle is the biggest selling item at Amazon then the rest of their business must be doing poorly. But considering the Nook hasn't launched yet ...
@(Unverified) Yes, poor Amazon. How could anyone possibly think Amazon is doing poorly?
@(Unverified) Again, with 5 seconds searching on Google you could see that they announced their results only a month ago, and their net profits rose from $118 million in the year ago quarter to $199 million this quarter. Meaning 69% growth year on year. Yeah, that must suck.
Congratz Amazon?
@Stereotype Totally. It was a bit of a risky business strategy, and it's totally paid off. They've turned the books market on its head, and it now looks like it could really grow after a lot of decline in the internet age, and Amazon are in a good position to take advantage of it.
I first thought that e-books were for people with money to burn, but now I see their value. However, I'm WAAAY more intrigued by the nook, most probably because of the sexy styling and the color screen on the bottom. I'm really looking forward to the review and wondering whether or not if my unconditional love for the nook is justified.
On the topic of e-books, does anyone know a Zune Pass-esque subscription service for books? If not, why isn't there one?
@ch3burashka
There's no all-you-can-eat service for renting books yet, but if you have an e-reader capable of reading ePub format (which I think is pretty much everything but the Kindle) then chances are good that your local library's website offers free 14 day ebook rentals for no charge at all.
@ch3burashka
I have a LOT of pdf e-books on my comptuer that I'd like to read on an easier screen than an LCD. I would love to get one, but I just don't have that cash now. Don't assume that everyone reading on e-readers are all using pay-for content... or even if they are, that they paid for it (!)
@ch3burashka
Some libraries offer an e-book lending program. Check with yours to see if they've joined the 21st century, and if they haven't then suggest it.
@ch3burashka The Nook does look nice. Having the touchscreen separate from the e-Ink avoids the screen readability issues the Sony Touch reader has been criticised for. Plus it has a decent book seller behind it, and wireless book purchasing like the Kindle. It also supports the ePub format which the Kindle does not, so you can buy books from stores other than B&N. Also it looks like both the Nook and the Kindle 2 (with the latest firmware update) will support PDF files. Sounds like the Sony models actually have the best PDF support at the moment, but the Kindle actually seems usable if you've got decent eyesight and you spend most of your time reading in landscape mode, 1/2 page at a time. I haven't seen a review of the Nook's PDF capabilities and the answers from B&N on their support boards are noticably lacking in detail here so we'll just have to wait for some more units to leak out. Presumably things will improve over time with future firmware updates.
The kindle beat out sliced bread? It wiped out a 60 year lead that fast? I gotta get me one of those before they sell out!
While this is a very impressive statistic, it's worth keeping in mind that the Kindle is the only product that is exclusive to Amazon's store. We're comparing the sales of products sold by one online store to the total number of Kindles sold in the world. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Kindle has actually outsold any other product in the marketplace.
too much bezel.
@One Love Is this a Zune HD post? I didn't notice...
@One Love The wide bezel is actually for the better. While excess bezel on electronics is normally seen as wasteful, for an eBook reader it gives you plenty of real estate to hold the reader so that it's comfortable. I own a Kindle 2 and appreciate the wide bezel.
Just in time for the holidays Amazon delivers the news that encourage us to buy what everybody wants :-) ... Word up Amazon, you know how to make news. You sure know how to make a great e-book too.
Uh-oh. Apple fanboys are not going to be happy about this. We know how much they love to tout their favorite device is always #1.
@NohOne1 The post has nothing to do with apple.
@NohOne1 Obsess much?
@Maxwell
That is the point - it does not have anything to do with Apple.
We know how Apple fanboys live and die by Amazon rankings, so they must be quite upset right now.
@NohOne1
No, that's not the point. Not only is this story not about apple, there are no comments about apple at all except for yours. You're the only fanboy in the comments.
@Novieu
OK, OK, sorry. Trying to make a little joke about the rabid Apple fanboys around here, but apparently it did not go over so well.
If this is not a lie, at least is a very creative use of data. And given that Amazon will never publish the numbers we will never know.....
best selling by unit or amount of cash made?
@dystroglycan Jeff Bezos said it was the most popular product BOTH by unit sales and by total dollar revenue.
Who are these people?
maybe it's just one guy..
@tylersmyler - I wonder about that too- I've never seen on of these in the field. One would think these would be relatively popular in the Silicon Valley, if anywhere.
I commute with tons of people on the transit everyday (in Toronto), and I've only ever seen 2 people in my lifetime with e-readers.. and they were both Sony.
this is a lie I tell you!
Enjoy it (while it lasts), Amazon.
Impossible. They must have done some herculean fudging of the data to make this happen. Even if the Kindle is selling well, it couldn't possibly outsell other established, cheaper items.
I prefer (and will keep) my Sony PRS-505 :-))
Hmm, I actually went from books straight to audiobooks. I have no temptation to get one of these...
@(Unverified)
And I have no temptation to respond to your post.
you the bests too engadget
you the bests too engadget
I will never buy a kindle until it becomes more open. I do love the design however.
@ejay
It is open. It can't get much more open.
What's not open are the Amazon books for Kindle; No, you can't use those on another device, but the Kindle can read ebooks from other sources; You're not locked into Amazon editions.
Furthermore, if you buy an Amazon edition, you have every right to keep it on your computer hard drive, CD, DVD, or wherever you want. You can read it on your computer, on your iPod/iPhone, or soon on other devices. You have complete control over the books you buy, and even if they do have a goof like with the 1984 debacle, you can still re-sync your copy of the book from your storage media and continue to read it (a fact Engadget continually ignores in their reporting of that story).
You can read books in most of the standard formats, so if you want to get books in Mobi format from other places that don't use DRM, and read them on your Kindle, you may. Nothing is stopping you. I have hundred of books from various online sources on my Kindle.
So what "open" features are you looking for? If it's the ability to read your Amazon Kindle edition books on a Sony reader or Nook, don't hold your breath... But then don't expect ebooks purchased from Sony, B&N, or Borders to work on other devices, either. They're just as protected-- and ALWAYS WILL BE-- because publishers won't just throw books out there without some form of DRM.
However, if you want open-source books, public domain books, or other books in standard formats, the Kindle handles them brilliantly (with the exception of PDF, which is often very small on the Kindle screen... Just convert it to Mobi with Calbre for free).
Honestly, there's not much more "openness" available to a device that does this. Most of the restrictions are in the ebooks themselves, not the devices, and these restrictions are in place because publishers-- Not Amazon (or any other reseller)-- put them there.
Considering this, Amazon is pretty generous with the number of ways you can read your Kindle editions, and they give you every possible way to download them, back them up, and keep them just as you would any paper book.
The only thing on the market that's more "open" is a real paper book, and good luck lugging a few dozen of those with you on vacation, or wherever you may need more than one book.
To each their own, but don't base your opinions on the FUD here at Engadget. They tend to skip the details to make the story sound more dire and potentially dystopian, when really, the Kindle is no more restricted than an iPod, Zune, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3, Sony e-Reader, Nook, or any other major media product on the market.
When you buy the DRM'd media, then yes-- You have restrictions. Don't use the DRM'd media, and they're all as open as you'd like.
@ZeroCorpse Actually, I'd like all of these devices (Nook and Kindle both) to support the ePub format along with Adobe's Digital Editions DRM. Yeah I know, I'd prefer a world without DRM too. But if we're going to be forced to buy books wrapped in DRM, it should at least be a DRM that isn't specific to a device we're going to replace every few years. What if you buy a lot of books for a Kindle and then decide you think the Nook is cooler? None of those books can be read on the new device.
ePub together with Adobe DRM is about the closest thing we've got to a "universal" DRM'ed format right now. Sony's ereaders support it for example, as do Mentor, Be-Book, COOL-ER, Elonex, iRex. Not sure about the Nook. If we had a single format for buying DRM'ed books you could go to either B&N or Amazon for a given book based on price, and move your library from device to device, etc.
Hopefully all the non-Amazon devices will support this and the competition will force Amazon to support it too, even if they continue to sell books themselves in Kindle only format... Competition should be helpful here.
I don't buy it for a second.