Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Citigroup Analyst Boosts Kindle Sales Forecasts

Peter Kafka @ D: All Things Digital:
Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney ... is bullish enough about the Kindle to boost his sales estimates for this year and 2011. Mahaney now thinks Amazon (AMZN) will sell 5 million units in 2010, up from an earlier estimate of 3.9 million; he predicts sales of 8.4 million units in 2011, up from an earlier target of 5.2 million units. ...

More Kindles sold means more e-book titles sold, so Mahaney has bumped up those numbers, too. He assumes that each Kindle device represents two books sold per month, and that Amazon will sell 128 million units in 2010, and 271 million in 2011.

Note that even when a potential Kindle buyer grabs an iPad instead, it’s not the end of the world for Amazon, because it can sell e-book titles to iPad owners, too. (In fact, Amazon has begun selling the iPad itself.)
And the retailer still holds a huge edge on Apple in terms of available catalog. ...