“April 3 is probably not going to be a day of joyous celebration in the home of Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos,” Therese Poletti reports for MarketWatch. “Unless, of course, it brings with it news reports that Apple Inc.’ iPad tablet media device is not flying off the shelves, as many expect it will when it goes on sale for the first time in the U.S.”
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck with that. iPad will pass Kindle’s 2+ years of total sales as soon as Apple makes and places that number of iPad units on store shelves. iPad demand is not a problem.
Poletti continues, “‘Amazon’s Kindle is facing a barrage of attacks,’ wrote Jonathan Hegranes, an analyst with Signal Research, in a report on Monday. Hegranes started coverage of the online retailing giant with a sell rating, noting that its shares are trading at nearly 40 times 2010 earnings forecasts. ‘Amazon is facing the law of large numbers and its premium valuation leaves it vulnerable to rapid share price decline.'”
“Indeed, Amazon has been engaged in all kinds of moves, from threatening publishers to reportedly buying a touch screen technology startup, Touchco, in anticipation of the iPad and its color touch-screen,” Poletti reports. “New e-reader entrants from rivals like Barnes & Noble, Sony Corp. and others are also adding pressure.”
MacDailyNews Take: With iPad on the market, anyone who buys a Kindle, Nook or Sony e-reader is nuts, ignorant, lied-to, or some combination of the three.
Poletti continues, “‘We are not optimistic that Amazon will come out of this situation in a better position to gain share or generate oversized profits from this business,’ Hegranes added… Sandeep Aggarwal, in one of his last reports before leaving Collin Stewart earlier this month, estimated that Amazon has shipped a total of 2.25 million Kindle units… in the last 27 months.”
“An issue to consider with Apple entering the tablet market is its comparative openness over product unit volumes with investors. For all its secrecy over product development, it warms investors’ hearts by disclosing quarterly sales unit volumes of all its core products,” Poletti reports. “Conversely, Amazon’s secrecy with Kindle unit and revenue numbers has been the bane of many investors. Apple is likely to continue its current policy with the iPad, which may put further pressure Amazon to disclose its own unit volumes. If, in the face of Apple’s continued openness, Amazon continues to be secretive, investors might start to wonder if Amazon instead has something to hide.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Amazon’s Kindle hardware was likely a clarion call to Steve Jobs (not to mention an affront to his taste). As we’ve written before, Kindle looks like something John Dykstra superglued together back in 1975. Amazon’s e-book business (hardware, obviously, and content, too) is going to take a wallop from Apple’s iPad+iBookstore. The only question is how much Amazon will be hurt in that department. Again, our advice remains the same for Amazon’s Bezos: Concentrate on your Kindle software for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad; forget about venturing way, way outside your core competency trying to making new Kindle hardware; and get on your knees and beg Steve to allow you to sell iPads. The same goes for Barnes&Noble. Sony, oh, Sony: What a mess. So many issues that concise advice is virtually impossible: Concentrate on what you do best and forget the rest, work as closely with Apple as possible (especially in the Internet TV arena), and put Stringer on the clock; a turnaround is supposed to, you know, actually turn around at some point.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “cptnkirk” for the heads up.]
Amazon has something to hide? Ummmm duh! If you won’t disclose how many Kindles you have sold, you are hiding something.
Why even consider a Kindle when you can get and iPad that costs, feels looks and does a million times more than the flimsy clunky Kindle???
Ouch!
He may want to invest in knee pads. It will the a long slog to sell iPads. Unless he is very good on his knees!
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“MacDailyNews Take: With iPad on the market, anyone who buys a Kindle, Nook or Sony e-reader is nuts, ignorant, lied-to, or some combination of the three.”
Or they may just have a deep hatred for anything Apple. Wait. I guess that is what you said, a combination of the three.
“With iPad on the market, anyone who buys a Kindle, Nook or Sony e-reader is nuts, ignorant, lied-to, or some combination of the three.”
Exactly. Buy a Kindle and get a Kindle. Buy a Nook and get a Nook. Buy an iPad and get all three.
“Why even consider a Kindle when you can get and iPad that costs, feels looks and does a million times more “.
Didn’t think the iPad was that expensive or the Kindle that cheap.
MW ‘straight’ as in ‘get this straight’.
Amazon better just hedge their bets and make absolutely sure the the Kindle app is spectacular on the Mac and iPhone and the iPad.
And then of course pray that Steve doesn’t ban other e-book apps from the app store.
I can’t see apple banning the kindle app, the two million kindle owners will be most likely to move to the iPad of they can bring their library with them
@MacDailyNews
your statement about Sony is the best commentary of this Millennium in our galaxy !!! Thanks from an italian fan ! ‘Ad majora’ !
Sony has an e-reader?
“…, Amazon continues to be secretive, investors might start to wonder if Amazon instead has something to hide.”
Sells of less then half of what the Analyst have predicted. The fact that the Kindle is a loser product and a product for losers from the day it was released. Amazon thought that they could define a new market and build an e-reader that had a lock on the market. A market that Amazon wanted to own and earn most of the profits from. So, to do it they strong armed all the publishers into a fixed price anti-competitive price by which Amazon got 80% of the and the publisher got 20% (smaller publishers got shafted even more because they only got 10% or less). Then Amazon had the Kindle designed and built e-book reader sells would determine the value of the e-book business Amazon had built. The Problem for Amazon was the Kindle really sucked and sucked hard. Amazon’s saving grace was that no one outside the company didn’t know how few they had actually sold. Building on comments from everyone Amazon had the Kindle 2 and the lager DX designed and built. As Amazon still continues to market and hype their Kindle units the facts are the Kindle is already dead and if the truth be know then everyone would know that the Kindle was still born and never really defined the market or even dominated the market.
The question isn’t will Apple take over the Kindle market but, rather has the Kindle ever really been designed it’s own market?
If Amazon hasn’t been selling many Kindles, as many here seem to believe, then why would iPad be any kind of threat? If their sales of Kindles go from few to fewer, big deal. It would be like Apple getting their knickers in a twist because Apple TV had a new rival entering the market. No, if Amazon is worried, Kindle must be a pretty successful business for them.
My boss, a very smart woman, just purchased a Nook. She very happily uses an MBP and iPhone (switched from BB), and was quite up-to-speed on the iPad (partly because of me). Her reasoning for buying a Nook? It uses e-Ink (which she felt was easier on her somewhat aging eyes and allowed the device to last a week on one charge), got her discounts on B&N;e-books and lets her get access to thousands of free ones, and was more portable for her particular travel needs (she likes smaller bags, for instance, and flies a lot). In other words, for half the money of an iPad, she felt this device satisfied all of her particular e-book requirements.
I was surprised when she told me this because I absolutely thought she’d wait for the iPad, but I can see her point. And she’s told me she’s very willing to consider switching once iPad’s out in the wild for a few months and she can see what it’s like for people to use it. I guess what this means is that while iPad will indisputably succeed where no tablet ever did before, while iPad will revolutionize casual and work computing for millions of people and all future generations — there may still be a role for dedicated devices like an e-book reader. Just saying, is all.
For the record, I’m waiting for iPad. Right after the MBP gets its refresh.
@Apelock
I think Amazon is less concerned about Kindle, the hardware, than they are for Kindle, the e-book universe.
Kindle reader buys directly from Amazon. Own a Kindle? Your books are always going to be purchased from Amazon. The iPad with its iBook Store breaks this chain that Amazon was trying to forge for its future. It’s only a matter of time that the majority of reading material will be purchased for, and consumed on, an electronic reading device. Amazon hoped to own that market. Now they may not.
Their main opportunity now is to make sure that their Kindle app is better than Apple’s iBook app.
Kindle will feel pain. Lots of pain. They will feel the mother, grandmother, and great grandfather of all pains.
Pain so painful, it hurts even thinking about it. It’s painful even as I type this….now that is PAIN.
Amazon need to get the price of the Kindle down, drastically down so that it becomes affordable as just a reference device so that people can have 1 or 2 hanging around whilst they do their actual work on their iPad or computer. I always use to have more than one reference book open so I could glance back and forth, this is the only way I see a Kindle surviving.
I can assure you that the model calls for revenue from eBooks, NOT Kindle sales. They’re going to drop the price on that MF soon after the iPad hits shelves, if not before. If you can buy an eBook from Amazon that will work on their Kindle for iPad app, the hardware from Amazon becomes worthless.
I bought a Kindle 2 way before any of this talk of an iBookstore or the official iPad announcement. So I have plenty of Amazon eBooks. I’ll still be able to read the ones I bought right on my new iPad. The Kindle goes on eBay shortly thereafter, and if I am lucky to get $100 I’ll take it.
Amazon doesn’t really care how many Kindles it sells. Amazon cares about selling the media (ebooks in this case). So they’ll target iPad owners and sell ebooks to them. Amazon is ultimately going to make MORE revenue and profit from ebook sales because of iPad, not less. After the first week of sales, there will no doubt be more iPads out there in the hands of potential ebook customers than all the previously sold Kindles combined.