Sales over the festive gift giving season are vitally important for any retailer. Somewhere between 30 and 40% of yearly sales can be made in the weeks running up to Christmas. From Amazon's perspective, the 2009 festive season was a very important period for a variety of reasons over and above the usual annual sales boost.
Amazon's Kindle 2.0 e-book reader, released in February of 2009, and which had already proven to be a massively successful product for Amazon, became the online retail giant’s best selling, most gifted and most wished for product ever. It has been the number one selling item on the Amazon website ever since.
Amazon actually sold more Kindle books than traditional printed books for the first time ever on Christmas day of 2009. Almost certainly, this would have been heavily influenced by those lucky people who got a Kindle for Christmas testing their Kindles by logging on and downloading one or two Kindle books. A good number of these would almost certainly have been free, out of copyright, Kindle books (there are 1.8 million of these available to download).
However, it was still a very good achievement for Amazon and a sign of things to come. Currently, Amazon regularly sells more Kindle books than traditional hardback books – they are selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks at the moment. It looks like it will be no more than a matter of time before Kindle book sales outstrip paperback sales as well. No doubt, at some point in future, Kindle books will sell more than both hardbacks and paperbacks combined. The only question is when will that happen?
In the autumn of 2010, Amazon unveiled their enhanced Kindle reader. There were a number of technical upgrades – including more memory (enough space for 3,500 Kindle books), an improved e-ink technology display with higher contrast and a smaller and lighter casing. Amazon also unveiled their new, base level Wi-Fi only Kindle - which sells for just $ 139. The Wi-Fi plus 3G model is still available at $ 189 – still significantly lower than the $ 359 launch price of the Kindle 2.0.
With a $ 139 price tag, the Kindle is very close to being a personal electronics "impulse buy". You could quite easily pay quite a bit more for something like a mobile phone or a mid level mp3 player!
In spite of the release of the iPad from Apple - which many business analysts predicted would be the device which would finally end the Kindle's dominance - the Kindle 3 became the fastest selling Kindle to date. Amazon, for the umpteenth time, sold out of their readers and customers faced a wait - of up to five weeks at one point – before they could get their hands on their readers.
The Kindle was already the top selling e-book reader. The upgraded Kindle 3 simply increased the gap between the Kindle and the chasing pack. The fact that the Kindle’s only genuinely credible competitor is a versatile tablet computer which costs over three times the price of the Kindle tells a story in itself.
Amazon won't be counting their chickens before they're hatched - but they must surely be expecting their new, improved Kindle to deliver another set of record breaking sales returns this Christmas. It will be interesting to see whether or not Amazon run out of Kindles again in the run up to Christmas. Customers are limited to a maximum of three Kindles each right now – a clear indication of Amazon’s confidence in their number one reader. It looks like being another Kindle Christmas in 2010.
Amazon's Kindle 2.0 e-book reader, released in February of 2009, and which had already proven to be a massively successful product for Amazon, became the online retail giant’s best selling, most gifted and most wished for product ever. It has been the number one selling item on the Amazon website ever since.
Amazon actually sold more Kindle books than traditional printed books for the first time ever on Christmas day of 2009. Almost certainly, this would have been heavily influenced by those lucky people who got a Kindle for Christmas testing their Kindles by logging on and downloading one or two Kindle books. A good number of these would almost certainly have been free, out of copyright, Kindle books (there are 1.8 million of these available to download).
However, it was still a very good achievement for Amazon and a sign of things to come. Currently, Amazon regularly sells more Kindle books than traditional hardback books – they are selling 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardbacks at the moment. It looks like it will be no more than a matter of time before Kindle book sales outstrip paperback sales as well. No doubt, at some point in future, Kindle books will sell more than both hardbacks and paperbacks combined. The only question is when will that happen?
In the autumn of 2010, Amazon unveiled their enhanced Kindle reader. There were a number of technical upgrades – including more memory (enough space for 3,500 Kindle books), an improved e-ink technology display with higher contrast and a smaller and lighter casing. Amazon also unveiled their new, base level Wi-Fi only Kindle - which sells for just $ 139. The Wi-Fi plus 3G model is still available at $ 189 – still significantly lower than the $ 359 launch price of the Kindle 2.0.
With a $ 139 price tag, the Kindle is very close to being a personal electronics "impulse buy". You could quite easily pay quite a bit more for something like a mobile phone or a mid level mp3 player!
In spite of the release of the iPad from Apple - which many business analysts predicted would be the device which would finally end the Kindle's dominance - the Kindle 3 became the fastest selling Kindle to date. Amazon, for the umpteenth time, sold out of their readers and customers faced a wait - of up to five weeks at one point – before they could get their hands on their readers.
The Kindle was already the top selling e-book reader. The upgraded Kindle 3 simply increased the gap between the Kindle and the chasing pack. The fact that the Kindle’s only genuinely credible competitor is a versatile tablet computer which costs over three times the price of the Kindle tells a story in itself.
Amazon won't be counting their chickens before they're hatched - but they must surely be expecting their new, improved Kindle to deliver another set of record breaking sales returns this Christmas. It will be interesting to see whether or not Amazon run out of Kindles again in the run up to Christmas. Customers are limited to a maximum of three Kindles each right now – a clear indication of Amazon’s confidence in their number one reader. It looks like being another Kindle Christmas in 2010.