Amazon.com keeps secret the number of Kindles it sells, saying the devices generate too small a portion of overall revenues to warrant disclosure. But on Thursday, the company gave its first big hint at the e-book reader’s financial success.
In a press release detailing the e-commerce giant’s solid all-around performance in the fourth quarter of 2009, CEO Jeff Bezos says, “Millions of people now own Kindles.” So, assuming that at least two million people have bought the device, and that each paid at least $259 – the cost of the least-expensive Kindle – Amazon now has a business worth more than $500 million in sales. Not bad for a product that’s a little more than two years old.
Amazon spokeswoman Mary Osako declines to specify whether the word “millions” was deliberately pluralized in the release. “We’re letting the quote stand for itself,” she says.
The size of the Kindle market has been the subject of much guesswork, since e-books are such a new and promising business. In 2008, Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney came up with a method of estimating sales based on a filing from Sprint, the former wireless carrier for all Kindles, and estimated 500,000 that year. Forrester Research recently estimated that 2.5 million Kindles have been sold, based on consumer surveys.
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