Shelf Awareness is reporting on Amazon sales and that
As usual, the company offered limited information about book and Kindle sales. The Kindle continues to be the company’s “#1 bestselling product” and there are now 500,000 book titles, 9,000 blogs and 175 newspapers and magazines available for the e-reader.
Worldwide media sales, which includes books, e-books, music and DVDs, grew 26%, to $3.43 billion. Worldwide electronics and other general merchandise, which includes the Kindle, rose 72%, to $3.51 billion.
Amazon said it expects revenue this quarter to be between $6.1 billion and $6.7 billion, up 31%–44% over last year. But because this might be below analysts’ predictions of about $6.43 billion, in after-hours trading Amazon’s shares fell 6% to $141.
John Aiken, an analyst with Majestic Research, told the Wall Street Journal that the Kindle “now accounts for 2% of Amazon’s revenue and its e-book sales account for an additional 1.5%.” He added, “We assumed there would be a little bit of slowdown of Kindle sales into the iPad launch, and we really did not see that.”
Aiken predicted that “as many as seven million Kindles will likely have sold by the end of the year.”
If the Kindle is really such a success, why not proving it to the world? I like Amazon a lot, I guess 2/3 of my online shopping goes to Amazon, but I can not understand the secretiveness. Looks like they try the Apple approach in their marketing efforts…